The Janus Paradox: A SHIELD Codex
by KhamanV
Summary: When an implausible crime strikes the home of Doctor Stephen Strange, he unexpectedly reaches out to a recovering SHIELD for help in solving the mystery behind it. But Loki - still one of Coulson's most unusual allies - thinks there's much more to the riddle presented than the Sorcerer Supreme is letting on. (Codex 8)
1. Sanctum Violatus

(This entry to the series picks up shortly after the events of both Age of Ultron and the AoS season 2 finale. Spoilers will occur in the form of some references and background details, although the story itself is not centered on those events.)

The Janus Paradox: A SHIELD Codex

 _In me there are two souls, alas, and their_

 _Division tears my life in two. ~ Goethe's 'Faust.'_

1\. Sanctum Violatus

This is the place in the grey, where countless beams of perfectly formed rainbow light cut through the fine grey mist that stretches within and beyond both space and time. Each beam is a song woven of pure magic, thrumming its crystalline, harmonic rhythm through the bones and soul of anyone who might pass through this secret nexus. The light always strikes against the blackness that forms below the the grey, where a chaotic rumble comes and goes as it pleases. An obsidian storm of unformed, untamed will, screaming its own raging song in defiance of the light. One moment a crashing river, the next boiling black lava; its true shape is a whisper lost in madness. It is a battle that neither may win for long, there is only a tangled co-existence for mindless, implacable eternity.

As above, so below.

This is the heart of that oldest rule of magic.

This is the nexus of Order and Chaos, the hidden hall within the middling veil, the most secret core of the Sanctum Sanctorum. This is the home of magical extremes – and the home of the sorcerer that must stand astride them and not waver from the needful balance between. This is a place of power, and so it must be forever tended, watched over by someone devoted. Someone who understood the potential of magic, who has embraced it supreme above all other art.

That someone stood calmly in the center of the magical storm, untouched and yet formed utterly by that maelstrom. The storm of light and dark stretched through time. He anchored himself firmly in the _now,_ and focused himself on what was to come. In that place, he was power itself.

The sorcerer was tall and slim and the angular lines of his face seemed ageless, his swept-back dark hair streaked with startling grey at the temples. He wore a sleekly tailored black suit with a jaunty red tie, and a grim smile sat on thin lips within an equally dark goatee. He regarded the endless depths of the grey in serenity, waiting for the power that called him here, the spirit of eternal Agamotto. One of three great Gods that knew his name, and he theirs.

Within the nothingness formed a mighty Eye, massive and full of knowledge, and the glistening iris of no color that could be seen by a human's vision alone sharpened tight to regard the sorcerer supreme. It saw everything, lost nothing, gave nothing back for free.

"Yes," said Doctor Stephen Strange, looking steadily back into Agamotto's impossible Eye. His hands clasped together before him, long-fingered and fragile within thin black gloves of the finest leather. Gloves that hid the scars of a past that still lingered close to him. His voice was low and stentorian, a trained orator's voice that carried him through a thousand medical presentations, frightened away a dozen jumped-up bureaucrats from interfering with his once-unparalleled medical practice. "I know. I see the flaw in the pattern. The crack in the cycle."

 _You see,_ whispered the Eye, its voice neutral. _Always you believe you see, Sorcerer. But you do not FEEL._

A muscle jumped in Strange's jaw at the sonorous warning that rumbled through Agamotto's last dully spoken word. There would be no informality in their meeting today, no easy banter between steward and magical deity. He kept his response clinical, and chose to expand only on the obvious at first. "There is a disruption in the balance, some subtle fluctuation. It has been plain to me for some time."

 _It grows. It CHANGES._

"I intend to investigate the situation thoroughly." Strange's lips pursed together, already personally certain of the imbalance's cause. That agent of change, a whisper of chaos within an ordered path that had long since been written and bound. And, he remarked to himself privately, bitterly, once the cause of an almost full reconstruction of the house that bordered the edges of the Sanctum on the Earthly plane. _His_ home, that quaint mansion that loomed over bohemian Bleecker Street, shattered and violated by a pair of intruders. That it had been well-intentioned was one thing – the other was the _principle_ of it.

 _You intend to observe this matter._

"And I will take action if it is so deserved." Perhaps it would _not_ be. Still and all – the lost demigod was at play in lands that were not meant for him. Strange's fingers tightened against each other. The balance was everything. The demigod lived now in a kind of open defiance of that rule; the myths and legends of old rewritten with each step he took in a mortal world. It would take _study_ to know what that meant. But first, Strange would be neutral. That was his duty.

 _We observe that the door opens. See to it that you do not fall prey to the mistakes of arrogance, Sorcerer. Heed not the sound of our words but the meaning underneath. Listen clear, look within. We weary of replacing our chosen._ The Eye closed and disappeared into the grey, leaving behind only the incongruous scent of a soft meerschaum pipe and something else that was clean and green. Then that was gone, too.

Stephen Strange sighed, unclasping his hands and tweaking the bridge of his nose with two long fingers. "The door opens? That's less arcane symbolism than usual, Agamotto." He looked up at the sound of creaking wood, thin and distant as if from across ranging hills. A thin eyebrow arched, finding wry amusement. "Or perhaps merely literal."

"Doctor?" His assistant's voice crept through the Sanctum. "I apologize for interrupting your communion with the Vishanti."

"It's quite alright. I learned nothing I wasn't already preparing for." He glanced over his shoulder at the silence that answered him. "Is something wrong?"

"Sir." It was not the sweeping grey that made the door's creak so distant, nor his assistant's voice so hesitant. "We've been robbed."

Strange whirled in place, a flick of his hand peeling away the Sanctum's veil to show him the tight, frightened face of his assistant only a few feet away. Now instead of the vast emptiness, there was only a comfortable, utterly earthly room around him. His first thoughts went to the sacred Book of the Vishanti, long since restored to its white marble alcove deep within the rebuilt Spiral Libraries. The tension in his voice was clear. "What was taken?"

"Only a key, sir. The Promethium Key. From the Hall of Curios."

"And that's all?"

The head tilted downward. "I will continue to look, but I believe so. No wards are otherwise troubled."

Strange lifted both eyebrows near to his high hairline, relaxing slightly. The key in question was inert, a relic of a lost otherplane whose power was rendered null on this one. Harmless in almost anyone's hands, and those that could affect it were all well gone. The key's door was sealed forever, and nothing lay on the other side except the eternal void. "A magical theft of a pointless trinket."

Still, Agamotto's warning flickered through his memories – the opening door, and now some matter of a key set adrift in the world beyond. Questions of symbolism wrapped themselves tight around what should be only a minor incident. Disquiet lingered. The words of the Vishanti triumvirate – and of Agamotto in particular - seldom held one meaning alone. And even a pointless artifact lost was a violation of his trust and duty.

"The theft was, I believe, not magical, sir." The hesitancy returned to his assistant's voice. "I think you should come and see."

. . .

Director Coulson looked his most unusual SHIELD agent up and down as he arrived, noting that the distracted demigod kept fiddling with something tiny in the pocket of his black cotton hoodie. "You're straight back from your, what, galactic parole hearing?"

"Not so much a hearing exactly. More of a routine check to ensure I've not conquered any galaxies of late. Nor would I call _any_ aspect of my travel particularly straightforward." The latter sounded particularly grudging. "Asgard was well enough, but I already tire of boondock airports and sharing space in cargo holds with beasts of burden." Loki rolled his eyes up to the ceiling of the Playground's hallway. "Not as if I thought Miss Romanoff jested with me, but I had at _least_ hoped to rate better than steerage. I filed your damned reports, however. Your little tasks are done and the world is yet again safe for whatever it is you people do for fun. Democracy, I suppose the line goes." He shrugged, every syllable amiably sarcastic. "Your spy dramas miss all the incredibly boring bits of this duty, I note. And I have been interminably bored for some few weeks."

"Sorry about that." For once, Phil actually did sound apologetic. He then grimaced, drawing Loki's careful, considering study. Then, to underline his point, the demigod lifted his head with dramatic slowness to regard the recent battle damage along the halls and the handful of new, unfamiliar faces in side rooms. A few of these looked curiously, warily back at him.

Loki then looked the director up and down, his sharp gaze resting for a long time on the sling Phil still wore. He followed up his assessing stare with a blandly even tone of voice. "There was some matter not shared with me before my temporary departure. This _besides_ whatever nonsense that was with the latest crisis of Stark's making, which I note, blessedly, had relatively little to do with me. For _once_. That all was obvious. I chose to be tactful and not question it at the time, but unless you've engaged in a particularly _enthusiastic_ form of remodeling... of both body and building, I note..."

"Kinda needed to keep you on a low profile for a while." Phil cleared his throat, thinking over recent events as he kept moving down the hall. The Ultron crisis indeed had relatively little to directly do with the demigod before him now, but indirectly? The matter of the infamous pointy stick would probably take some time to go over. "We... had a few hitches while you were out. Sort of a scheduled cleaning. Not so much _my_ scheduling, though."

Loki arched a single eyebrow. "Dare I ask?"

Phil winced. "Save it for later, when I can have a drink." He waved his tablet at the demigod. "Also, new odd job." He laughed at the demigod's heavy sigh. "It's probably small, and it's even relatively local. Maybe it'll be a laugh. Come on down to the office once you're done checking back into the system, I'll fill you in."

. . .

Coulson didn't look up when Loki let himself into the Director's office. He kept shuffling around his files instead, still feeling clumsy even though it was his good hand he'd kept. Both the stacks of thin paper and a handful of digital displays flickering in midair above the desk were at risk from his fidgeting. "I was thinking."

"Well, _there's_ your trouble." Out of the corner of his eye, Phil saw the ersatz Asgardian fall into the chair across from his desk with lazy grace. What he could see of the pale face looked distantly amused.

Phil lifted a finger in a mild warning, chuckling. "Going through a fair bit of reorganization around here. Some new projects on the slate." He paused, waiting for another smart-assed remark and vaguely surprised to not hear one coming. He looked up and found the demigod's attention wandering for a moment, one slender hand toying with his chin as he looked away at nothing. "You okay?"

"Mmm." The hand left his face and gestured at the Director. "Pardon." A thin, humorless smile. "Family matters. Regardless, your reorganization."

"The rate things are going around here, I was considering the idea of setting up another small division specifically for things a bit more in your wheelhouse. The arcane stuff. Supernatural antics, things like that." He grinned; he'd been sitting on _this_ wisecrack for a week while its intended target was away. "We could call it W.A.N.D."

"Or we could _not._ " Loki's voice was derisive, quickly dismissing Phil's joke with a wave of his hand. He snorted. "What brings that up? This next menial task you prepare to set before me?"

"Kinda." He plucked a file out from the middle of one of the shorter stacks and finally sat down. "So, you remember that time we broke into some guy's really nice house to rifle through his magic library and ended up breaking New York again in the process?" He looked up to see Loki giving him a remarkably hairy look. "Yeah, he called."

"I recall you told him _you_ owed a favor, which he was not made serene by."

"And he's cashing it in."

Loki's head slumped back against the chair, where it proceeded to shake back and forth in an explicitly slow, sardonic denial. "What does this florid 'sorcerer supreme' claim to want?"

"He had a break-in and a theft at his house yesterday. Wants us to investigate it. Under the circumstances, when I say ' _us_ ,' I really mean ' _you._ '"

The response was immediate and curt. "I suggest you throw it back, have that drink, and forget about the matter entirely."

Phil's shoulders went back in surprise. He leaned back against the plush cushion of his chair to consider the reaction. "That's blunt. Why?"

"No mage goes to the _police_ when their artifacts go a-wandering, no wizard calls for help from the bureaucracy. We take care of our own matters in our own way. If he's called to us to clean his errant mess for him, then it's just as likely he believes _we're_ part of that mess somehow."

"Loki, even for you, that's unduly paranoid."

"Magicians keep their own counsel, Coulson. In any world, in any discipline, this I've seen. I've already tangled with Latveria's secrets this year, I'm not interested in wandering into the unmapped field of a man that could well bear an honest grudge." The dark eyebrow arched again as he still stared at the ceiling, the thin lips grimly amused. "It was a _very_ nice house we wrecked, you and I, and though it's surely well-rebuilt, that's not easily forgot."

"You were content to make sure his magic book got back and SHIELD has him on the list as a beneficial resource. He's not that Doom guy. I don't know where you're getting this. Look." Phil laid his good hand down on the desk and leaned forward to fix the demigod with an earnest expression. He saw a sharp green eye flicker down to note him, already unmoved. Phil kept going anyway. " _I'm_ kinda curious. He seems to think this is something more in our corner than his. So we go and we look it over and if you still think it's a bad scene after we find out what the deal is, we'll detangle."

"My call on that." That made the sleek head lift to regard him more carefully, hearing something new in Coulson's voice. "Who else are you putting to this?" Silence. "Who's in charge?"

The question got an unexpected response. "You are."

That hung in the air for a while, Loki's eyes narrowing in a way Coulson couldn't read. "Historically, Coulson, allowing me overmuch responsibility does not end well for all parties involved."

"Do I have another sorcerer on staff?"

"...You do not." The words sounded reluctant.

Phil knocked his knuckles on the top of the desk and slouched back. "Well, there you go. It's delegation season. Try to not split the planet before the weekend." That got him the dry snort he was looking for. The next got him a look like he'd lost his mind. "Pack a lunch, we're gonna go see what he thinks is so weird. Also, you get to drive."


	2. Elemental, My Dear Watson

2\. Elemental, My Dear Watson

. . .

Coulson ambled past Doctor Strange's assistant the moment he found an opening in the fastidiously polite older man's greeting, heading straight through the doorway that framed the space between the enormous foyer and a massive parlor. "Place looks great. And, hey, I'd like to state again for the record we're sorry about the damage last year." He kept going past the lavish antique furniture and towards the long counters in the back that held beautiful silver bowls. He dipped his hand into one without asking, popping the candy he found there into his mouth. "I was right, they really _are_ M&M's." He looked up and grinned at the assistant. "Sometimes they're Skittles. I hate that."

"Doctor Strange's residence was decreed free of those when they canceled the lime flavor," replied the assistant. He put his hands together in a posture of pure dignity, tilting his head at the Director.

"Good man." Phil glanced at Loki, who was staring at him from the doorway he'd chosen to lean against. He jiggled a few of the candies in his palm. "You want some?"

Loki looked at him in a tranquil, blank-faced way that Phil knew came to about the same result as rolling his eyes as hard as he could. He looked down at the assistant, now pointedly ignoring the cheeky offer in favor of what passed for brusque business. "And the doctor himself?"

"He will join us presently, sir. My apologies." The assistant bowed again, this time swiveling to get the demigod in on the casual diffidence. Loki brought his head up to stare at the Director past the man's head. Phil shrugged back, his own body language telegraphing the phrase _deal with it._ Loki looked away again but didn't press his irritation.

"He leave the scene intact?" Phil looked back down into the bowl and made a conscious decision to leave the rest of the candy alone.

The answer came floating down from another doorway leading beyond the welcoming parlor. "I did precisely as you requested. All is as both I and my assistant found it." Strange virtually glided into the room, gloved hands pressed together firmly at the palms. His smile was warm and inviting. "Gentlemen, thank you for coming so promptly."

Phil bobbed his head in a polite response, noting that Loki still had that blank, privately sarcastic look on his face at the doctor's entrance. _Oh good,_ he thought. _We're all going to be great buddies right away, I can tell._ "That's great. I'd like it if you could both walk us through how you discovered the scene. Once we know what you do, we can go over it, nail down a few threads to start an investigation if we think we can help you out."

"I'm quite sure you can," came the smooth reply. The doctor turned his head to smile pleasantly up at the slightly taller Loki. "All troubles aside, there are still and ever whispers of SHIELD's competence. I can only assume the future will be kinder to you."

"Aw. That's really comforting to hear we've still got fans." Phil shifted his weight from one leg to another, feeling vaguely like an unnamed guest star on someone else's awkward sitcom. The two sorcerers were regarding each other with a silent serenity that had all the undertones of a slow-building turf war – Loki's studiously bland expression that Phil knew held a dozen different warnings in opposition to a cheery smile on the doctor's face that showed a tiny flash of teeth.

And then whatever it was between them broke. Strange whirled gracefully away from the silent battle to gesture at his assistant. "If you please." He looked across the room to Coulson next. "I began this matter in my private study, up a level and across from the incident."

Loki didn't move as the assistant began to head towards the door. "You heard nothing."

"Not until I was summoned." The doctor spared a glance towards the demigod, then shrugged offhandedly. "I was in astral communion at the time," he offered as a bland extra. Then he kept going. "A regular occurrence, nothing unusual. I have many such duties that require me to engage elsewhere."

Loki responded at first with a slow blink. "Full transposition to what I'm assuming was a _parallaxis planate_ , or a tethered supernal walk?"

Not so much as a start at the mildly spoken challenge. "Tethered supernal. Both my persona and the boundaries of my study as anchor; standard for when I am at home and have a relative assurance of both physical and parapsychic safety."

"So you can _hardly_ call that wholly astral." To a half point of credit, the demigod didn't sound smug when he said it. Unless bland clinical detachment was standing in for blatant smugness, which Coulson figured was probably the case.

"I was speaking colloquially, for the benefit of our untrained guest." The hand flickered towards Coulson, who was trying to not immediately glaze over at the rush of meaningless magical jargon.

Loki glanced at the Director, then at the assistant. The use of the singular made his eyes narrow almost imperceptibly again. His voice took on a conversational ease. "Well, more's to the point, your earthly senses would still be engaged. And yet you heard nothing until your assistant retrieved you."

"That is correct, I'm afraid. If you'll come and see?"

. . .

"Well, that's weird." Coulson cautiously poked a finger at the flexible patch of reality that had once been a patch of warmly painted decorative brick. The tip of it pressed the wall into a concave pit half an inch down with a sensation along his skin like prickling water. He looked down at Loki, who was crouched to examine the bottom arc of the soft place with all his senses. "And you say that's not magical?"

"It isn't, no. Not a trace of ether or scent of elementalism. No shades nor bindings nor sub-plane call. Magically, it's inert." The pale fingers were knotted together. "That leaves us with something almost certainly technological. Some form of warp, something that rearranged the cellular composition of the wall's physical matter." Loki shook his head. "I'll go with 'weird.' Suits as well as any other term, if a bit overused." On reflex, he looked back over his black-suited shoulder.

Phil watched the untrusting motion. "They said they were gonna let us alone while we chewed this over."

The aristocratic nose took a dry sniff of disdain. "Probably an air elemental bribed and bound to the rafters to watch us in their stead." His eyes flickered up to punctuate his words, as if such creatures would simply pop into view at the address.

Coulson looked up, too, unable to resist. He saw nothing, feeling vaguely like he'd gotten tricked by a cat into staring at the invisible bugs in a corner. "Is that a thing?"

"Cheaper monthly than a security subscription." Loki allowed a sardonic grin. "Rather like your Tillandsia plants, just toss them a little ball of energy every month for a snack, give them a toy to blow around, don't be overly insulting. Easiest of the lot to negotiate with. Not like the flame lords."

Coulson slowly shook his head. "You really think W.A.N.D. would be a bad name for another division?"

"Not everything has to be an awkwardly forced acronym, Coulson, despite your almost obsessive need to come up with them." Loki reached out and traced the boundary between where the wall was only a wall and where it trampolined through itself instead. "You don't have anything on the books that would do this? SHIELD had a regular fire sale after yon Hydra forcibly re-organized the place, might be something that went out the door with your spare uniforms and, apparently, that Gonzales' sense of humor. Rather sorry I couldn't meet him, the more I think about it. Might have been a laugh."

Phil gave up part of _that_ story in the car on the way over, although there was a lot he was still trying to hold onto for a better time. The expression on Loki's face made the few weeks of hellish interval almost worth it. The news about what became of the scepter was less amusing, however. "I got a few ideas to start looking into; old SSR/Stark projects, maybe have Fitz blow through the cold war archives, drop a dime to Skunkworks out west. If I can get him focused." He had another thought on his mind but let it sit for a few. It was a good notion but he knew for a fact it wasn't going to go over well and he wanted to pick the right moment to broach it. "What about the thing that got taken? This key?"

"Promethium. I've heard of the metal but not the artifact." Loki looked up at Coulson. "Rare, extra-dimensional. Practically little more than a reddish pewter when not under the effects of its own realm, rendering it only slightly more interesting than plant moss." He shook his head again. "Our thief went to the very fringes of your technology to rip off what is functionally a tourist's souvenir trinket. I am forced to agree with Strange's assessment there."

"That makes no sense. So, whoever this was... they portaled in through a once-solid wall, bolted several rooms into the place like they had the tourist map _we_ couldn't find the last time we were here, yoinked a pointless doohickey, then waltzed back out before the resident sorcerer could turn him into a newt." Phil shook his head. He tapped the wall one more time to feel the weird prickle, then took a couple steps back to drop into the plump burgundy-leather lounge chair with a squeak and a thud. "Fine, what's your call?"

Loki straightened up, leaning his shoulder against a brick that stolidly refused to move. "You're _actually_ asking me."

"Said I would." The Director dropped his hand on the thick armrest to squeeze it. He wiggled, enjoying the muffled squeaking noises the leather made under his butt. "Holy crap, this is a nice chair. There's another one of these things behind you, it's super comfy. Should ask where he got 'em." He grinned. "You'll never want to rip off a throne again."

Loki pointed directly at him in a warning, just before taking the indicated seat. He slung one leg over another. "No. Galactic conquest, still tempting," he said airily, steepling his fingers together. His thin smile made it clear he wasn't particularly serious. "Might need a proper chaise before _that_ temptation lessens."

"You're an ass." Coulson laughed. "So?"

The demigod looked away from him and towards the wall instead. "Very well," he said, after a long period of silence. The fingertips tapped together, slow. "We ought investigate the matter."

Coulson couldn't resist a blink of surprise. "That's a quick change of heart."

Loki shrugged at him, passing a hand across his face. So fleeting he almost missed it, a single finger was visible against the pale lips. _Silence,_ the almost universal signal. He looked untroubled. "It's interesting enough, I suppose. The good doctor made reference to having a sample. Shall we make arrangements for a proper return?"

"After you."

. . .

"Before you ask fumblingly after my decision, it's simple. I've found myself curious as well." Loki looked down at Coulson, following slowly behind him as they wandered back up Bleecker Street to the anonymous-looking black sedan they'd arrived in. "He didn't arrange the theft of his own artifact and then call us for a snare, that's utterly illogical and was never my concern. This is a man who tilts far more towards the side of Order when given opportunity. We knew that when we came to lift his book last year. While his title and duty means keeping firmly to balance, I find it is rare to not have _some_ preference. He is no exception."

Coulson absorbed that. "And you, what, prefer chaos?"

"It's _far_ more complicated than that, but you might interpret such. There is _always_ a balance, I've spoken with you about that before. But how you keep to it may tilt one way or another at a given time. It's a wavelength, not a fixed point. Magic requires flexibility. Acting in chaos has suited my needs admirably in the past, but that is not everything I am as a mage. You saw well what happens when you stumble towards the distant fringes." He waved his hand dismissively, his voice turning thoughtful. "And yet this man is orderly. His charges, these artifacts, often are not. A complicated duty. He has a theft and does not have the time or resources to examine this particular theft. A straightforward decision. He comes to us, then, knowing I think the shape of what help will come. The reasons there are again complicated."

"You're losing me, Loki." Coulson kept walking. "You're willing to follow this now _because_ something smells off to you?"

"He knew _I_ would come, Coulson. That I would be tied to this task. Curious."

"I don't know how." Coulson shoved his hand into his pocket, jogging a few steps to pull alongside Loki's longer strides. "It's not like you got an entry in the monthly employee newsletter. Potluck Tuesday, Casual Day is the 17th, please welcome the guy that stomped New York to our ranks, blah blah." He pictured the accompanying clip art and began to grin. "Although, really, I should've."

"Doesn't matter. We leave tracks, sorcerers. He knew. It's his business to know these things. And now? A useless key, a sundered wall, a chain of events that puts two sorcerers of opposite nature in the same room. There was a pattern to this, and he knew and chased it."

"How do you even get there?"

"His tone, when I first questioned him."

"He sounded like a car mechanic, I thought. Jangling through a bunch of jargon with you."

"He rushed, added unnecessary detail to be damn sure no one so much as thought to ask what he was in communion _about._ An overly casual avoidance. Many people do that, even trained liars. Think that the diversion will keep them from away from what they don't want to talk about. So in that context? Consider again his voice."

"Just tell me where you're going with that."

Loki walked backwards for a moment to fix Phil's gaze with his own. "A common enough tone, I think," he said. Then he flicked a hand dramatically, making a mockery of Strange's stentorian voice and manner. " _We... we were_ just _talking about you."_

"Aaaand we're back to paranoid." Coulson shook his head. "I don't think he has it out for you."

"Not at all." Loki shrugged. " _I_ think he's deciding if he _should."_

"What the _hell_ for?"

"Couldn't say. But I'd rather be out in front, chasing his useless little key, than have him decide in a bubble where I have ultimately no notion of the outcome."

"Loki." Coulson took his hand out of his pocket to run it over the side of his face. "Okay, fine. Say you're right and you're on his radar for _whatever_ reason. Can I ask you to not just go and pick a fight with him?"

"I have no intentions of doing so. Absolutely none. As I say, I'll chase his key and I'll do it within your strictures and rules. And he will watch me, and I will watch him in return. If we are all quite fortunate, that will be the end of it and his eye will swivel away. Just the usual friction at the edges of the grey." Loki spread his hands. "A sorcerer's ordinary duel. They're not all showy. Mostly it's two stubborn gits thinking quite hard at each other until they're distracted by something shiny."

Coulson narrowed his eyes at him, fumbling in his pocket for the keys he'd taken back from Loki earlier as they drew close to the parked car.

"Oh, come off it. I'll push the investigation and cause no unnecessary trouble. What more can you ask?" Loki leaned against the trunk, easily catching the key fob when Phil tossed it to him. "So to the more basic needs. I'll need some assistance. Technical, no doubt. Some method of tracking that rare material down. Would be better than spellcasting at the damned thing, just in case."

"I heard you ask him if he's got a spare piece we could use as a test sample. Sounded like he did. Good start."

"Mhm. Is that something young Fitz could do?"

Coulson fidgeted. Still not the best moment, but it was going to have to do. "I... actually had another idea. Fitz could, but it would take some time. I don't mind giving him over to you otherwise, put him on the thing with the wall. But as it happens, you know we already have a guy on the line that's top tier with experimental metallurgy, energy, and physics. He could probably get us a molecular drilldown pretty quick. Bonus, he's just across town. You can drop me at the airport and get that sorted out in a couple hours."

Loki cocked his head at Coulson, eyes narrowing. Then they widened again as he realized who the Director meant. "Oh, that seems a _dreadful_ idea," he said. His voice was an unhappy monotone. When he spoke again, his voice was still dull with displeasure. "Is that how you'll intend to keep me in line with few means to overwatch me? Parade me past yet another of your Avengers to remind me of my place?"

"Loki, no." Coulson laughed. "Stark's taking a break. He's actually being pretty mellow right now. The thing with Ultron's got him in, like, five minutes of actual introspection. You go in there with our badge, under Fury's name, the two of you'll just snark at each other until the collective smog of attitude chokes all the oxygen out of the room. It'll be fine. Just bring him the sample to see if he'll run a scan on it, pass along the notes, then you can run this mess however you want. You know. Within reason. I'm not going to saddle you with the guy. I wouldn't do that to _anybody,_ I got stuck being his handler too many times to be that cruel."

"I don't believe any of it." Loki sighed. His hands went up in surrender.

"To steal a line: _Trust me._ " Coulson grinned up at the unconvinced face as he pulled open the passenger side door of the black sedan. "I'll get you an appointment at the Tower, maybe send Fitz up to check that wall out thoroughly for you. You'll have fun."

"Oh, I'm _sure_."


	3. Clarke's Third Law

3\. Clarke's Third Law

Tony Stark flung the tiny torque wrench across the room, not looking over when it clattered noisily atop the assorted other wrenches laying in the white plastic tub he'd dragged over from his actual workspace. The view was better in the main room, anyway. Gave him something to look at while his thoughts raced – experimental alloys, resistance test results, trajectory mathematics, questions of bending physics. He ran a hand through his hair, then dropped both on his tracksuited hips, studying the prototype Iron Man torso he had laid across his bar. It was scratching the finish, but whatever. He had a buffer for that. He picked up his glass and swished the ice around in it, vaguely catching up to something important from a couple minutes prior. "Friday?"

 _"_ _Sir."_

"How's my girl today?"

 _"_ _Do you refer to me or Miss Potts?"_

"It can be both, right? Can totally be both." He glanced over at the display as it flickered on, flashing the visitor alert reminder. "Could you do me a huuuge solid and tell that guy to go the hell away? I'm not in. Went for a burger. So sorry, try back next decade. Or, you know, preferably never."

 _"_ _You agreed to the terms of the visitation, Mr. Stark. I'm afraid it's locked in."_

"Yeah, but-"

 _"_ _Your guest is already in the access elevator... and arriving now."_

Stark rolled his eyes dramatically up to the ceiling, then stepped back towards the bar when the far elevator accessing his apartment opened with a soft chime and his unwanted 'guest' stepped out. The tall figure paced across the lobby into the apartment proper in that familiarly animalistic, graceful gait. He ignored the chilly prickle of the worst case of deja vu ever as it crawled along his scalp, covering it with another scratch along his hairline.

He gave the man a cursory glance, quickly noticing all the differences between the prisoner he'd brought to the Helicarrier and now – no more humorless looking guards in military blacks accompanying the figure at all times, no almost invisible smirk on the Asgardian's face, no intimidating alien's armor of green and gold and black. Instead the tall man wore a studiously bland expression and a finely fitted black suit. Pinned under his arm was a silver digital tablet and a manila folder. To be sure, the name on the visitor's alert was a pseudonym designed to keep anyone from freaking out – Tony couldn't resist a smirk when the automated snapshot messaged up to him from the Tower lobby was recognizable but the name attached was the improbable yet more ordinary 'Agent Locke Brisingamen.'

Loki took a few more steps towards him, and still, no smirking amusement on the thin face. Instead – and Tony's eyebrow quirked up high as he considered this – the demigod looked about as happy with the surprise visit as _he_ was.

Well, maybe he wouldn't need the stand-by suit this time.

. . .

"Don't hand me that. Don't hand me... things. Especially not you." Stark uncurled a finger from around his glass to point. "There's fine. Don't touch my stuff, either. Jesus, I gotta read my notifications more closely. All Fury said was a SHIELD dude was coming by, and he made me promise not to greet 'em in the Hulkbuster. The man thinks he's funny."

Loki silently tossed the manila folder onto the bar next to the disembodied metal torso, preferring to not look the human in the eye if he could avoid it. Then he turned slightly to be sure a bar stool was close and sat down on it with reserved grace, setting his tablet down on a surface near his own elbow. When he looked up again, he found he was addressing Stark's t-shirted back. The man was already crossing over to his tubs of tools and disassembled machine parts. "It's lovely to see you again, Stark. And how is your meager little vacation going?"

"It's really more of a staycation. No responsibilities, still have access to the good Indian takeout up the street. House booze, warm naan, it's a win all around." Tony crossed his arms against himself, tapping a few fingers against his bicep. He didn't turn around. "Is this like an like an Alcoholic's Anonymous thing with you?"

"What?"

"You know – okay, maybe you don't." Stark turned around, looking Loki over with a squinty, deliberately dramatic swagger of his head. "Step Eight, I think it is. You're supposed to make a list of everybody you pissed off while under the influence and be willing to make it up to them." A sardonic smile spread within the confines of the neatly trimmed goatee. "There's been some rumors going around. Someone dropped a wasp on Roxxon a little while back, right? The Latveria thing. Got me curious so I started poking. Anything bad happens to those guys, I notice. Family thing. Weren't any tears from me." He flapped a hand, still talking rapidly. "So, turns out, you can't get Romanoff drunk. I knew that, didn't try. But Barton? Easier. I got a few hints out of him, not much. Fury's call today seals some of what I heard – though, really, _you_ hanging out with Fury? Wild."

Loki smiled thinly, knowing better than to correct him.

"Anyway. Seems you're hanging out with whatever's left of SHIELD on like a world tour of trying to make people less pissed off at you. So it's, what, my turn? I'm insulted I wasn't first on the list. Really am."

"This was hardly my idea, Stark."

"Usually they have a mentor program, you know, someone to guide the recovering addict..." Stark gave Loki a full-teeth grin as the alien tilted his head to scratch at the long hair behind his ear. "So, not AA?"

"I have a thousand ways to respond to that, not _one_ of them polite."

"Oh, good. You're still a dick when you want to be." Stark looked away, still grinning. "That's reassuring. Can't have too much change in the world all at once."

Loki sighed and leaned back against the bar. "Is this truly how we're going to start? Very well, you've got me at certain disadvantages. This territory is yours; I'm an unwilling visitor. I've no interest in starting another bout with you today." He arched an eyebrow. "Although if we're going to head into threats regardless, I might mention that I'm still waiting for that drink."

Tony drained his in a slow, deliberate response, clinking the glass hard onto the bar on the other side of the torso. Loki watched him, clasping his hands together in front of him. Instead of rising to the implied insult, he jutted his chin at the manila folder. "Not even a jot of curiosity?"

"Got plenty of weird to study just standing here." Stark leaned hard over the bar, fishing out a half-empty bottle of perfectly aged Glenlivet that was still within reach. He glanced at the demigod while he kept going. "By the way, 'Locke'? Really not subtle."

"Who needs subtlety when you have style?" The remark drew another thin, sardonic grin from Stark. The eyes flickered up to him over the rim of the crystal glass as he raised it, studying him like a torn apart blueprint. The hostility implicit in the gaze nettled him and he returned the grin with a flash of teeth.

He didn't expect the nature of the returned fire, hid the way the words made his breath freeze in his throat. "Did you know? About the glowstick of destiny?" Stark plucked a black swizzle stick from a container just behind the bar, jabbing it into his glass with more force than necessary. "What it really was? What it could do." Loki gave him not a blink. "What it _is._ "

Loki glanced beyond Stark and out the tall pane of glass, watching a cloud lazily pass through the sky and finding his center once more. Coulson had given him a warning that the scepter was a matter of fresh discussion, and he supposed, distantly, he should have been better prepared for such an attack. When he spoke, he kept his voice in a careful measure. "Not _then_. Never fully, even later. I've held suspicions since. Possibilities. But I could not predict what was to be wrought during your last adventure."

Stark's voice was deadly calm. "Did you tell anyone what you know, while you've been on this fun little parade of acting like you're less of a piece of shit? Ever occur to you to drop a warning? Because believe me, we could have used one."

"I'll thank you to ease your tone," Loki barely managed to keep the words from outright anger. "I do not pretend to understand your trials, you do not need to fret at mine."

The glass dropped onto the bar again. Stark took a step closer to him. "Did you ever do a _single thing-"_

Loki got to his feet in a single graceful move, towering over the smaller human. His voice was even, but deathly cold. "You have absolutely no comprehension of what I have done nor what I have tried to do to resolve this matter." He stared down into the face, seeing no fear but only a serene, deadly curiosity. At the corner of his vision was the steel-alloy torso. _And what suits have you designed since to deal with me, Stark? Shall we find out?_ He grit his teeth at the creaky inner voice, no longer one he allowed to feed. Instead, he forced his voice into controlled neutrality once more. "If you must demand more of me - SHIELD was aware of some few of the scepter's movements, and I've long since told that I was uninterested in re-acquiring it. That was true. The knowledge of Hydra's experimentations... No, I did not know all. If I thought I knew something of value... of these last months, I would have spoken. I could have changed nothing for you, Stark."

"Well. Your brother knows something, and he's not telling. Ran back to Asgard after it was all over. If he won't talk, I don't know that I believe what you're claiming." Stark was the one to step back from the brink of a fight, shoulders still forward. One hand reached out to find the glass again, faltering at the look on Loki's face. "You didn't know that?"

"We find our... current relationship healthier at the arm's length." His eyes narrowed slightly at Stark's barked laugh. "The truth has been told. I am not ignorant of consequences here. The scepter was as much my bane as all of yours, though I expect that to be disbelieved as well."

The glass went to Stark's lips, then away again, untouched. "Anything you want to cut anyone else in on while you're here?"

Loki stared at him. "I can give you half truths and stories and lies that were told me and they will do you no good. If I learn a thing of real use, then in time..."

"It'd be so cool if I could believe you." Stark sighed. "Believe me. That'd be like a Shyamalan twist. You're the big ol' Norse god of bullshit, right? So it'd be sort of wild to think we could just take anything you said at face value."

"I am, much as it pains me to admit it, not truly a god."

Another smirk creased through the goatee. "But you really try at being one."

"Oh, let's discuss humility, Stark." Loki flung a hand in the air. "Let's do have _you_ lecture me on that, of all the creatures on this mortal world."

"Hey, I collect at least half a dozen humanitarian awards per year since I shut down the weapons division. And I will tell you, I was humble as hell accepting all of them."

 _"_ _Mr. Stark, you were present for less than three such ceremonies, the first in 2-"_

" _Thank you,_ Friday." Stark beamed at Loki as if his AI hadn't said anything more than 'dinner in thirty.' "She's still learning the flow of the place. Been an understudy so long, she doesn't really know my sty-oh, hey, look a bird." He flung his hand out to gesture dramatically at nothing out the window.

Taking advantage of the awkward impasse, Loki tapped at a pocket inside the jacket of his suit. Something clinked. "The file you're dutifully ignoring is SHIELD's first pass at a material I'm quite certain you've never encountered. I've a sample available here. We need a way to trace it, Stark, preferably from beyond a laboratory's boundaries. The purpose of my unfortunate harassment of you is merely to locate some fool's missing trinket. It's not much of a job, but it might amuse for novelty's sake. And, more obviously, it will distract from the unpleasant topic currently at hand."

That drew Stark's attention back. He finally glanced down at the thin file. Then the human's gaze drifted back up to his with the barest narrowing of real interest. "What kind of material? Alien?"

"Extra-planar. Dimensional, specifically." Loki crossed his arms, leaning back further. "Inert, metallic... technically magical."

"Magical?" Stark dropped onto the bar stool next to Loki, poking at the file with a neatly trimmed nail. "At that point, I'm pretty sure I can't help you. Yay, we're done. Have a nice century, don't let the door hit you-"

" _Why_ does everyone on this planet assume from the outset that science and magic are wholly incompatible?" Loki shook his head, annoyed. The stool creaked underneath him. "Certainly I see the relevant themes in your literature, but the lessons they teach aren't all true. At worst they are distaff counterparts, a kind of mirror of each other. At best they entangle."

Stark glanced back at him. "Huh."

"Oh, now what?"

"I think I recognize that tone of voice. Pepper tells me I use it when I'm being smug during a tech presentation." He theatrically rolled his eyes. "I don't know what she means by that. I'm never _smug._ I know what I'm talking about. So did you. Eh, maybe ol' Hawk-guy wasn't screwing with me." He stared at his reflection in the mirror set behind the row of bottles.

Loki stared at him for a long minute, ending with an aggravated tut under his breath. "If Romanoff didn't kill me and Barton did not vomit at the sound of my name, I've no idea what else to tell you."

Stark set his drink down on the manila folder, then pulled out both the bottle of Glenlivet again and a second glass. He slid the new drink down the bar towards Loki's hand. "You can start by expanding on what you just said there. Okay, so magic and science aren't exclusive – what I always heard was the thing by Arthur C. Clarke. His three rules. Probably an old canard to you by now."

"Science advanced is indistinguishable from magic, etcetera... there's a validity to that, of course, but it's also only one perspective. In _my_ experience, it's much more than that." He offered a hand towards Stark, the other picking up the glass. He gave it an experimental sniff, followed by a more eager sip. "Do you know the concept of consensus reality?"

"I'm not a big philosophy guy. Read a little, sure. But if I can't weld it, quantify it, or take it out to dinner, it goes way down the priority list."

"Well, I'll spare a deep delve into the topic, but it's one of interest not only to philosophers, but magicians. The ultimate tool of a magician over all others is their own will and with that reality itself is impacted. What is known of how the universe works _seems_ to change, molded under another's domination. But that's not quite it either." The hands came back in on a clasp when he set the drink down again, the demigod's voice becoming contemplative as he found himself firmly in his own element. "It's more of realizing that what we know of reality itself is flexible and mutable. The _rules_ do not change, only that perspective. And no one perspective is always true. Is that so dissimilar to a scientific perspective changing day to day with what they learn?"

"That's kinda true. Good scientists know that what we _know_ changes constantly, yeah. Even I bow down to that; my Dad and I both liked to change up the rules every other week or so." Tony gave a wry grin, gesturing with fingers spread while he talked. "Okay, so I follow on that. You're being simplistic, though. I can tell. Science and the scientific method behind the work _do_ have firm rules of their own, and the method isn't really up to perspective."

"I'm trying to be brief, Stark, or I'll be here all day boring you."

"Meh. When you bore me, I'll stop refilling." He lifted the bottle to emphasize his point. "Don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."

Loki paused for a moment at the man's ever tweaky behavior before continuing. The hands stayed clasped, but his head tilted slightly as he considered his words. "Magic has firm rules as well, as I say. There is a method behind its framing, and while the techniques can be as different as the sorcerer wielding them, there _are_ patterns. There is a macro-pattern in particular. Order and Chaos. Everything else is the balance between, the collective ego of the observable universe dominated by the wills of those with the most _perspective_."

Stark flipped open the manila folder with its new circular mark on the cover and scanned the cursory overview of data on the new mineral. "Promethium? Helluva name. " He looked up at the alien demigod and didn't press what he thought was a pretty good subtle pun. "God, that's no information. It's, like, two lines of 'whuh?' and a graph." He flipped it shut again. "Okay. So you're going to try to tell me order and chaos has a role in science, to complete your parallel? That's... I don't know. It's vague. That's metaphysics, which I don't really welcome into my lab."

"From ritual to instinctive elementalism can magic be. A thousand days spent in careful meditation, or a call to wind and whim. It _feels_ vague to say science has kin there, but is not the atomic structure of gold cast in a kind of symmetrical perfection? And chaos – you see it in the maelstrom of the detangling material left behind when the atom splits. All life is of a dual nature – though perhaps not so obvious as your friend, Banner. He is primal; chaos and order both, and stands by his own will between. I can give you no clearer examples."

Stark looked at him over the manila folder, one finger toying with the stick in his glass. "The hell of it is, this is not the nuttiest thing I've heard this year." He sighed. "So that's what you do when you're prancing around wiggling your fingers? Sticking around in the middle trying to tell reality who's boss? It's not as simple as saying order is the good guys, chaos is the bad?"

"Is Banner as simple as that?"

"You know, the fact that you even bring that guy up sells your case better than you think. I got foota-"

" _I'm aware._ " He grimaced as Tony nearly choked on his drink.

"Okay. You got my interest. Definitely not for the right reasons, but you got me. What, you want me to rig a specialized metal detector on the fly?" He topped off Loki's glass, still snickering. "Finding the Tesseract was one thing, but this is going to be different. Doubt whatever you're looking for is going to have a comparable large-scale emanation. You're going to have to get closer. Gonna have to hunt the thing's trail and then try to pick up a trace. You said this was a missing item. I assume stolen?"

"Yes. And the rest is about as I expected." Loki shrugged at Stark's mercurial mood changes. The light wryness in his tone drew an examining look. "Something of that nature will surely work. We're adaptable."

"Bet you're not starting with a search of pawnshops. Okay. I make you this thing, and then you go, and everyone leaves me alone again until I come off of my vacay. Staycay. Is that the deal I'm getting from SHIELD?"

"That is the explicit deal."

Stark lifted himself up off the bar stool, tucking the folder under his arm and snapping his fingers at Loki without noticing what he was doing. "'Kay, we're going down to a proper lab while I figure out how to narrow the density search on a modified mineral scanner. Probably have that sorted by the time the elevator stops." Stark stopped and stared back over his shoulder at Loki. "So, how do you get around? Do you teleport or what?"

"I take business class, generally, if I can avoid being lumped onto a cargo plane." Loki grinned, all teeth and bitter amusement. "I like the little snacks."


	4. Doing in the Wizard

4\. Doing in the Wizard

. . .

"I don't like him." Fitz's murmured pronouncement fell into the silence of the little parlor like a brick. He poked deftly at the soft place in the wall, watching how it bounded back from the pressure behind his hand. His other hand reached out to tweak the tiny light attached to the portable testing kit that he was using to scan for various oddities or quirks in physics – a far deeper study than the one conducted earlier. He squinted for a moment at the complicated stream of mathematical readings, his gaze flickering up and making sure the owner of the residence wasn't still visible in the doorway of the warmly lit space. "Pleasant enough house, however." He put his attention back towards what he was doing.

Loki flipped a page in the magazine he wasn't actually bothering to read, a single black eyebrow arching as he glazed over a car advertisement. He shifted comfortably in the same luxurious chair he'd borrowed the other day. "You endear yourself to me anew, young Fitz," he muttered just as quietly. "But I'm curious. What's your issue with Strange?"

"Dunno." Fitz shrugged uncomfortably, waiting for the latest wavescan to complete before taking the chair next to Loki. He patted his pocket as he did so, making sure Stark's tweaked detector wasn't jostled too hard. "I just... He seems very sure of himself. No doubts in him. Steadfast, like. It's sort of unnerving. Sort of man that makes a decision and then throws himself behind it, and damn what may come."

"Hmmm." Loki flipped another page, then gave up on the interminable waste of reading material. He dropped it unceremoniously onto the arm of his chair, choosing to study Fitz in silence instead.

"That's not what bothers you?"

"That's _precisely_ what bothers me."

Fitz looked down at the machine in his hand, eyebrows furrowing together. "Well, that's weird." He looked back up again. "But, I mean... you gave him his book back. The Vishanti, right? And that was supposed to be a good book. And he was the right person to give it back to."

Loki gave the weary sigh of someone going over a repetitious point. "At the time it beat the alternative by an exceedingly grandiose margin. It was a good book then, Fitz, because it was in opposition to a great danger – an otherwise uncontrollable aspect of Chaos's darkest nature. All else is perspective. Where you stand, and who you stand against. It may be a reflection of the greatest good still, yes, nor do I think Strange some hidden villain. Opposition is not always so simple." He tossed the magazine onto the small table in front of him for emphasis.

"Ah." Fitz dropped the machine onto his lap, suddenly distracted. "I've got to think about this," he said, his gaze drifting to something beyond the wall.

"Well, it's a weighty topic," murmured Loki. He nudged the disregarded magazine with the tip of his black dress shoe, pushing it further onto the tabletop.

"Not that!" Fitz shook his head sharply, bringing himself back to the room. "No, I mean the wall. Doesn't seem quite right, like we're missing something. Need to mull it."

"Well, I'm sure staring at test tubes in your lab will be a better environment for doing such than a strange man's strange house." Loki gracefully pulled himself upright, tugging at his suit jacket as he did so. He noticed Fitz staring up at him with that odd, confused expression the young man had when he didn't quite know how to get at something. "What?"

"Ah, I was, uh, just wondering... where are you headed next?"

Loki gave Fitz a deliberate sort of pointed look, lifting his head to look down the hall and then back down at Fitz. "For a number of reasons, I'd like to establish that a bit more privately." He watched the human's hands fidget at each other. "Why do you ask?"

"Just..." He winced. "Can I come with?" He winced again, harder, as the demigod tensed visibly. "If that'd be okay? I'm just... sort of cooped up. Want to get out a bit. Don't care where, really, I mean, so long as you're not going to be in a firefight or something in the next three ho- you know, forget it." He looked down again at his machine, toying with the edge of it.

Loki looked the mournful young man over, seeing nothing of Coulson's artifice in the request. It was nothing more than an honest question from a clearly uncomfortable agent. Fitz, he reflected, had the least ability to lie of late and the most reason to want a freshening of his mind. He had not enjoyed that news, either. The girl, yet lost. But perhaps not without hope. The riddle did not seem to be his to solve. _Those damned Kree._ "A simple investigation, Fitz. I expect I'll be in a car a great deal, and maybe a plane or two should a few things bear out, and it will be only _slightly_ less dull than what you all had me doing for more than the last month."

"Had to be a nice change after Latveria, though, boring errands." The words were muttered awkwardly.

"For a little space, I suppose. And I realize for some there is likely a touch of envy." Loki looked over the curly mop of hair, shaking his head imperceptibly. "I'm not often grand company, Fitz. I do not pretend to socialize as I did when I was younger, and I can grow sour after long hours in a vehicle. This has been observed and remarked on."

The young man didn't look up. "We get along alright, I thought?"

Loki narrowed his eyes at the young man's desperate question, coming to a different kind of conclusion and following it up with a abrupt, weary decision on what to do. Humans, and this one forever harmless to him. "Your scans, this matter of the wall. I assume you can manage that yet effectively while mobile."

Fitz looked up, surprised. Then he started to nod quickly. "Absolutely. And, and I know how to operate Stark's tracking device, for the promethium. I can help. Make sure it doesn't pick us up for randomly handling the sample; it's set very touchy and all. I miss light fieldwork sometimes."

"Well, that's something," sighed Loki. "Clear your request with Coulson. If he cares not, then I suppose neither do I." He watched the younger man all but shoot out of his seat in gratitude, taking another step back to make damn sure he wasn't about to get hugged or something else equally obnoxious. "And _I_ control the music in the car."

. . .

"Ain't we a pair." Nick Fury sipped the small glass of scotch – a good brand, and he'd know. He'd given Phil the bottle on the younger man's tenth anniversary with SHIELD. He reached out to snag a pretzel from the bowl on the desk. "My eye and your arm. Congratulations. You look the part of a proper Director now. I should have made it part of the job requirements."

"It's all kinda Star Wars, isn't it?" Coulson slumped back into his seat, tugging at the bottom of his dress shirt with his good hand.

"You figure what you're gonna do for a replacement? We got the Winter Soldier's schematics figured out; also some of what your old Cybertek kids was up to. The Deathlok project. Plenty of options on the table."

"Dunno. I was leaning towards something Inspector Gadgety. That could be cool. I'd never be without a can opener again. Failing that, yeah, there's always the basic articulated kung-fu grip Luke got." He lifted his sling to demonstrate his best chopping action.

Fury snorted, wrinkling his nose as the heat of his drink tickled through his sinuses. "Last I looked, the Skywalker kid didn't invite Vader back home to meet his new family. Had kind of a different ending." He lifted a thick black eyebrow and took another sip, savoring it. "Then again, I don't know what the hell all Lucas changed in the rerelease. Never bothered."

"Skywalker did his best, though. Didn't give up on people."

"And neither do you." Fury sighed. "I'm not gonna drill you all night over your choices, Director. I made your call to Stark for you, so you could stay hiding. And I said I was droppin' off the keys to the Helicarrier, so to speak. That's what I'm doing. _All_ I'm doing. Would have told you if I had it in mind to do a job appraisal. Think those usually get done in the fall, anyway."

Coulson cocked his head to the side, waiting for it. "But."

Fury drained the glass and set it down with a soft clink. "But if Gonzales were still here, I'd give a twenty easy to watch him shit a kitten when he got a load of what you pulled with Loki. _Agent_ Loki. Unbelievable. He was a good man, Gonzales. All kinds of uptight about the changes the world went through... don't suppose I could fault him for it, considering. But. I didn't give _him_ the reins when our piece of the world fell apart, did I?"

"Had a little trouble getting him to see it that way."

"And that council crap." Fury made a little puffing noise of disgust, obviously on a roll and gathering steam. "SHIELD's never been a democracy, Phil. Look, I get the value of the perspective of others, but the idea of putting every odd job and decision up for a _vote?_ I wasn't parceling out stock dividends and a Christmas bonus, here. We're not a bunch of bankers. Sometimes a firm decision's gotta be made, and people gotta line up behind it."

"Within reason. With responsibility for the bad calls." Phil kept his voice diplomatic. The truth, he believed now, was somewhere in the middle. Yes, the final voice on an issue needed to be a leader's – but there was always value in hearing other voices. Even dissenting ones. Sometimes, especially dissenting ones. Looking for the balance.

Fury's one good eye searched his face and didn't give up what it found there. "Optimism, backed with a tight spine. Was always your thing. Made you a damn good agent."

"On some level, you think that's what SHIELD needed with you gone from the helm." Phil gave him a lopsided grin. "And I agree."

The former director slumped comfortably down in his seat, lifting up his glass to lean it high against his shoulder. "Your new idea looks good. Not that you need my approval, but it looks good. So, what's this other thing you got your pet crazy god on? This... house-theft of Strange's. He stands for that shit?"

"It had a few tweaks to keep him interested. He's been okay with being laid back for a bit, anyway. Maybe we're all tired of getting our asses shot off every other week."

"Helps that it comes from you, I'm sure." Fury gave another slow, heaving sigh. "You say he's an agent, fine. But if I came back, I don't think I'd be getting the same treatment. From what I see, it's not SHIELD he signed up with, despite what the paperwork says. He's only here because of you and your team. Love to know how you pulled _that_ off."

"There isn't a big mystery, Nick. Same principle behind how I was trying to work through with the Inhumans. With Skye's folks. How we get any enemy force to the table." Coulson shrugged. "You start from a position of treating people like _people._ That usually at least starts an honest conversation. Treat them like raw data, treat them like something less than human, that's when you get bit. Right now, he doesn't bite."

The dark eye filtered up to study him again. "So what kinda _conversations_ do you think he was having before he dropped on our planet with a mouth full of sass and a head full of greasy-ass hair?"

"Incredibly unpleasant ones." Coulson's hand tugged at a tablet at the side of his desk. "Can you do me a favor and look this over while you're here? One of the interesting bits from the 'house-theft.' We think someone used cutting edge experimental tech to 'phase' through Strange's wall. Not finding much in the Toolbox, and I've learned I hate talking to the Lockheed guys. I've got someone still arguing with them downstairs via phone."

Fury leaned across Coulson's desk to take the digital file, quickly scrolling through the pertinent information while he nursed his drink. "Not even the Los Alamos study? We got close. And that's some of the data that got into the wild."

"They never got actionable results at the site. Caused a temporary observable change in a physical matrix for a little while, sure, but nothing they could pass a test object through."

"That's the only thing on current record, Phil. That I know of. Unless someone hooked up a battery to another of your Inhumans – and I hear their last teleporter got turned into meat on a stick." He double-checked the data, shaking his head. "Maybe somebody got a breakthrough. But this looks like the Alamos gig to me. You sure someone got through the wall this way?"

"We did a full scan. Fitz's findings came in over the wire just an hour ago, and Loki went over it with... whatever the hell he does. He looked close, can tell you that. They're both going to continue working the scans while they keep digging on other trails. Something happened to the wall, no other method of entry identified. That's where we are."

Fury set the tablet on the edge of Coulson's desk and nudged it towards the man with a bent knuckle. "Don't need to tell you the obvious, so I assume you'll keep running possibilities. I'd say, looking this over, no way your thief came through that soft spot. The tech isn't there yet. Not earthly tech, anyway, and there's another wrinkle. But what do I know? Maybe someone got it working after all. You'll shake it out. Probably depends on who snapped it up."

Coulson nodded, grinning a little. "Long shot. Thanks, though. You staying for dinner?"

"I haven't had terrible SHIELD cafeteria food in ages. _Almost_ miss it."

He let the grin spread. "You'll still miss it. I put in a couple upgrades. Sushi once a month, tonight's pizza night. Generally edible most days. Always a big bag of nachos in the back of the cupboard for backup."

"This is all because I told you not to put a damn fish tank on that plane, isn't it?" He made a _tch_ noise with his tongue. "How is the Globemaster, anyway?"

Phil looked down at the desk, internally wincing. Followed by external wincing. "Let me top off your drink."

Fury gave him the longest, deadest black stare of his life. "I liked that plane, Phil."


	5. Reading the Runes

5\. Reading the Runes

. . .

"So, uh, where are we going?" Fitz craned along the inner window of the rented sedan, watching a large Boeing take off from the strip on the edge of the near horizon. "We pulling in to fly, or..."

"Joining the freeway going southwest."

Fitz looked over at the truculent, nearly hostile response from the driver, then looked out the front at the massive traffic backup that had them slowed before the on-ramp. Not unusual. He mapped possibilities out in his mind while the radio played softly and chose the likeliest one. "Pennsylvania?"

Loki took one hand of the wheel to root around behind the driver's seat for the sheaf of written notes he'd scratched out after leaving the mansion on Bleecker Street. Old habits – the pen was still better than the tablet as far as he cared. He glanced down to see which ones he'd grabbed and tossed the relevant ones onto the dash in front of the scientist. The rest went back to the pile on the floor. "Forgive my terseness, I'm trying desperately to not explode what appears to be a box with toy wheels pasted on it with the sheer power of my anger. Not only has this thing blocked up two lanes in a fit of commuter greed, but it is the _ugliest_ vehicle I've beheld thus far."

"No problem." He flipped between the pages, scanning the elegant, neat script that filled the top one. "Philadelphia? Who's this Drumm?" He looked up and over at Loki, still fixated on the back end of a teal blue Kia Soul while his lips began to curl back along his teeth. The problem had nothing to do with him, so he felt untroubled by the feral expression. Unless the demigod started raging openly, it was harmless and frankly understandable frustration. "You've a suspect already?"

"Engaging in a character study, more like. A contemporary of Strange's. Found the name crosschecked in our files while I was dithering about Stark's laboratory." He made a soft, irritated noise through his teeth. "Two hour drive, what the map told me. Should have been a simple matter. Because of _this_ lot, it'll at least be three. And that is yet wildly optimistic, I expect."

"A character study, then?" Fitz looked down at the notes again, reading the few things that made sense to him on the next few sheets. Loki's handwriting was clean enough – the problem was the faster he jotted things down to match the flow of his thoughts, the more it was likely the text would begin to meld into a hodgepodge of English and some sort of galactic proto-Futhark. He made out a few words before the neatly flowing script started turning into the equally neat and impenetrable angular marks. "This man's a psychologist?"

Loki glanced over at Fitz's furrowed brow, then down at the notes. He instantly realized the problem. "Damn. Wasn't intentional."

"See, this is why everyone's on you to use the tablets. No installed support for the runes, keep you from doing that for our sake." Fitz turned in his seat and put the sheets on top of the rest. He kept his position, watching Loki instead of the snarl in the road ahead. "No big deal. So, what, you're running a background check on Strange for possible leads or enemies? I thought we did that a while ago, before we... well, not quite indexed him, I suppose."

"A surface check, yes. Financial information, education, bloodlines... all that was assayed. I've read it. I look to something more. A greater context about the good sorcerer supreme."

Fitz's face contorted again, considering that. "Mental health, then? You can't show up on a doctor's doorstep and get their records. Need a ridiculously weighty court order, or, you know, Skye and a distinct lack of ethics."

Loki glanced in the young man's direction, not willing to take all his attention from the road in case of an exploitable opening. "Jericho Drumm's a contemporary, I said. Not his medical confidant. My ethics are not at question." He allowed a slight, ironic smile to curve that side of his face. "This time."

The ginger brows knotted together, considering what Loki was up to. "I'm sor- wait. Another sorcerer, then?"

"Of a sort, it seems. I'll know more when I clap eyes on him." Another exasperated huff when a potential gap in the traffic disappeared. Total distance achieved in ten minutes: five feet. Total aggravation collected: Measured in galactic proportions. "Which will apparently be _next damned week._ I suppose I should be grateful this matter did not begin in Jersey." He fished into his suit jacket and pulled out his Starkphone, glancing down at something he pulled up with his thumb. "Care to do me the most meager of favors?"

"How's that?"

Loki flashed the phone at him. "Arrange lodgings. That was the initial setup I'd planned, I'll trust to your wits to find something comparable on short notice. My anger and sarcasm aside, we would not have approached Drumm tonight anyway. And by nightfall, I will be reduced to inarticulate animal noises and a severe reconsideration of my promise to not take over this entire damned planet. _I_ could at least command a roadway system into existence that was not concocted by a soul-desolate madman. We'll come to him in the day."

"Stalin made the trains run on time," Fitz muttered, unfazed by the small rant. He dug around for his own phone.

"I'm going to let that slide, mostly because I started it. And get corner rooms if at possible, they're quieter I've found. You do not want to see me in the vicinity of a flock of hooting sports brats with minimal adult supervision."

"Or maybe I _do._ "

"Dark, Fitz. Surprisingly dark."

Fitz's mouth quirked in an unhappy, slightly sardonic smile that didn't fit his usually earnest face quite right. "Been that kind of year."

Loki sighed, then jerked the car forward into a space that suddenly opened as if from nowhere. In the distance, red lights began to flicker and move. The worst of the snarl seemed like it might begin to ease at last. "Hasn't it?"

. . .

Doctor Strange's body rested in perfect peace within his home, wearing only a set of light, neutral linens that felt like nothing against his skin. He was not within the Sanctum itself, but instead a comfortable room of meditation on the upper floors of the mansion. A single window gave him the sun or the moon depending, and the walls were draped with scrolls dense with magical information. Focusing on any one of them was an eternity of learning, but for now his eyes were shut. He did not need the old lessons. Not for this.

His physical form was held still in a modified form of the _padmasana –_ the famous Lotus Throne, with its folded legs and carefully balanced posture through the spine. Unlike the yogic exercise, there were two differences in his method. The first were his scarred, bare hands at work in the air, moving with deliberate care in ritualistic commands. Far more busy than the standard _mudras_ that accompanied yoga _,_ but slow and contemplative still. The other was that his knees did not need to press against the floor to ground his posture.

He was hovering two feet above the ornate woven rug and its golden threads that honored the Vishanti trio. Dust particles sparkled in the light that filtered along the floor underneath him. Whispering under his breath was the soft chant that also honored the Gods he served.

Behind his eyes was another scene entirely: the roiling morass of tangling events, the cacophony of _what had been_ that would inevitably become _what is to be_. A timeline to study, if he could but find the correct strings to pull free and follow. The 'threads' he followed were blurs of color and sound – some silver-thin and drifting as the lives that passed beyond his home faded into stories of their own. He sought a pair that would be obvious to him – two cords, one mortal-dense and smelling of duty and honor, and another so blatantly powerful that it was symbolically presented as a thickly coiled, cracking chain. And with a whisper of breath, he found them. Buried within the recent story of the Sanctum, drifting close once before in the past and then returning again closer to the present.

Two cards of his personal Major Arcana: The Director and the Demigod.

He followed the twining cords back, watching again from a new perspective the ruination of his own home. In the depths of the pit that opened underneath the Spiral Libraries, he watched with the old, cold fear as the Book of the Vishanti was nearly lost forever to the earthly plane that had been its sanctuary. And he watched as the unlikely pair struggled against all odds and Chthon's primal form to re-acquire it. A human's unshakeable faith, and the demigod's nigh-unbreakable will.

All this he had seen before. Between the pair was forged an odd kind of truce; from it was born a new series of possible fates. Inside his mind, Strange's soul-self refocused and followed the cords down the timeline, looking for the flaw he felt certain had to be there somewhere. Looking for _something_ that had set the balance awry. Had it been before the Darkhold's attempt to claim supremacy? He followed the chainlike cord back – watched the old Asgardian king stand revealed as a half-shattered, weary prince and tossed down once more. Watched the figure flee down hidden roads away from what he'd done and into the Place Between All Things in some private desperation. What happened in that place was a mystery to Strange, and not the flaw he sought. And after? Change, as the demigod claimed to crave. The costs had been high, but paid well. He could _see_ the chain that was Loki's essence begin to alter, begin to coil in new ways. The future was made of questions, as ever.

But there was no break in the balance.

 _The door opens._ Agamotto's whispered warning haunted him.

 _What am I missing?_

Again, he went down the trails of the past, looking for the warning that would shape the future. And again, he did not find it.

. . .

"Sir?" The question did not break the silence of the meditation room until the sorcerer gently dismissed his levitation. The body was now fully at rest on the fine carpet, relaxing into an earthly variation of the lotus pose. "The latest update from the investigation. SHIELD has been most courteous and timely with their reports."

Strange cracked open one eye, then another, turning to regard his assistant. The mental haze that accompanied a journey within drifted away easily as he centered himself in the now. "Any new developments?"

"The investigation of the fate of our artifact has entered the wild, with intermittent updates logged by... their lead on the case." The assistant cleared his throat meaningfully. "They are also re-running the data on the wall anomaly but have no firm answers. They avow that they will continue their studies until an answer is found."

A thin, scarred hand ruffled through black hair. "Well, it wasn't _magical._ I looked, you looked, that Loki looked. There was nothing of _any_ known discipline there. And you checked the front door, of course."

"A fantastically ridiculous number of times, sir. There was no ordinary entry." A thin eyebrow lifted as the assistant's hands pressed together for emphasis. "We redoubled our earthly security after the... prior incident, I remind."

Strange flicked a hand. "Of course. An agent with a set of lockpicks shouldn't have been able to get in so simply. We were being lax then." He shook his head. "The rest of the gates were no trouble with another sorcerer in tow. I hadn't expected one to make it here. So, if it's not either one, than what else is left?"

"I do not know, sir." He stepped back, inclining his head politely. "I intend to do another full examination of the house."

"Did you wish my assistance?"

"Not at all, Doctor." The assistant smiled. "Return to your meditations. No other shall trouble you."

"Until dinner?" The question was hopeful.

He laughed. "Of course, sir."

. . .

And like the sorcerer's own search through the intangible, the assistant moved from room to room and found nothing. He returned to the warm bricked parlor and its now-firm wall one more time to regard the mystery. Not a thing out of place – save for the key still gone. He traced the only possible path from the parlor to the Hall of Curios, and spent another length of time studying the empty display case with curiosity and the growing ire of what was, to him, a personal insult. In a moment of mild frustration, he puffed out a hard breath and dropped both hands onto the case to prop himself up. His fingers curled beneath the case, feeling his nails scratch lightly against the grain of the decorative mahogany.

"Enough," muttered the assistant to himself, gracefully straightening up and calming once more. "You may permit yourself no further imbalance of spirit." He brought his hands together in a ritualistic clap, and left the room to go down and prepare the vegetables for dinner.

In his focus and serenity, he never noticed the specks of dull, grainy red sand wedged under his nail. They would be lost with the grime of fresh potatoes and rinsed celery.


	6. Spiritual Consultation

6\. Spiritual Consultation

. . .

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Fitz practically hanging out the car window like a small puppy as the tall buildings gave way to the tell-tale marks of gentrification and cultural changes towards the city's center. They passed a bodega set on a corner, the smells of fresh street tacos and Dominican _pasteles_ and spicy beef wafting in. He could practically hear the human's stomach growl in response. Loki sighed. "You _do_ need to get out more."

Fitz pulled himself back into his seat. "Sorry. Never seen this side of Philly before. Came to the main downtown a few times for scientific presentations, but not all this. It's fascinating." He watched intricate graffiti begin to fill up the otherwise blank walls and the occasional spray of missing persons notices. The expression on his face suggested he was impressed with the artistry. "Not the best neighborhood we're heading to?"

To the boy's credit, he didn't sound concerned. Only curious. "Nicetown. I expect the people that make their homes and lives in it have their own opinion. Based on my examination of the recent police blotter, _they_ have a rather different one." He flickered a glance at a side alley as a traffic light slowed their car, watching lanky kids watching him with speculative intensity. "You do what you can when given little, I suppose."

Fitz leaned forward and saw the same small crew. They appeared to confer, then continued to amble up their way through the alley and out of sight. "Get the feeling people already don't think we belong around here," he said, his tone diplomatic.

"I don't belong much of anywhere, Fitz, and so I'll go where I please. We'll come to no trouble here. We'll be strangers, certainly, but I intend to bring no harm with us." The light changed. On the side of the road, he noticed a small flyer that confirmed his expectations – the grey and white logo of Project HOME. The non-profit clinic he was looking for was just a few blocks away. "Good, we're on the right path."

. . .

The volunteer nurse looked at his credentials, then slowly up the tall form to regard Loki's narrow, pale face as it towered over her on her stool. Then it moved back down to examine his expensive tie and crisply tailored suit, a vision at obvious odds with the half dozen young men waiting in the lobby of the free health clinic. "Looking for an appointment, honey?" The question was on the friendly side of sarcastic.

"Not a terrible idea," came the whisper from a peanut gallery behind the demigod. "Sorry, sorry, sorry. Couldn't resist."

Loki lightly shoved an elbow behind him, tapping Fitz in a painless warning shot on his upper arm. The boy was getting used to his company, much to his annoyance. To the woman – stout and practical, with sharp eyes in a round brown face peppered with youthful black freckles – he kept his voice courtly polite. "I'm afraid not; I wouldn't care to waste your time and resources. Nor is this an official police matter, I must admit."

The pen in the woman's hand tapped on the plywood counter as she continued to study him. "Humor me as I take a long shot here," she said in the same dry-friendly drawl, plucking a donation pamphlet from a bin near her hand and placing it on the counter in front of him. He picked it up and put it away in his suit jacket's inner pocket as she watched, noticing that there was another inner sheet asking _Have You Seen Me?_ "Trash can's right outside if you need. Or if you want to be obvious, I'll just take it back. Save on the recycling."

" _Actually,"_ he said, still courtly against the wall of her cheerful cynicism. "I was hoping to arrange a few moments with one of your volunteer staff today. During their break or whenever's convenient. Won't take their time any further."

"All our staff donate their time to us to help those who need it the most. That's a resource more valuable than money. If you want, I can go get a business card from whoever you're looking for. You can arrange something on their _regular_ time through their _regular_ channels." She smiled, polite steel with not a trace of rudeness in it. "I'm sorry, sir. We need these people to trust us with their privacy."

"I understand completely. Then let's leave it up to the volunteer." Loki reached into a different pocket and plucked out the card he'd prepared. He held it up between two fingers for her to see; his current pseudonym and the number of his cell visible. Underneath the surface of the thick paper roiled a completely different kind of business card, a series of inert sigils that bore his _real_ name and a universal statement of a sorcerer's truce. He smiled. "Rather than have you bustle around on my behalf on an errand, could you instead just pass this to Dr. Drumm when either of you encounter the other?"

She took the card from his hand and looked it over, back and front, then looked back up at him. Behind her, a timer beeped a soft alert. "That much I can do."

"Excellent, thank you."

"I'm serious, though. Trash can is outside. I get people throwing the damn things all over."

"On my honor, miss, I will not do that." He inclined his head politely.

"Look at you, all royal." She sniffed at him, amused. "Enjoy your time in Philadelphia, hon." She leaned to her side to lock eyes with one of the young men seated by the wall. Her hand came up to crook at him. "Mateo, your weekly's up. Come on back and we'll get you set."

. . .

Fitz finished eating the last of his pasteles, dabbing juice off the side of his hand with the crinkling paper wrap as best he could. A lost piece of decorative cilantro drifted down to the stained cardboard container. "Oh my god. I'm buying more."

"That hungry? They had a breakfast at the motel, I thought." Loki plucked up a runaway piece of fried plantain as he cast another glance back over his shoulder at the clinic up the street. Either they were busy or Drumm was patient. He expected a response to his message sooner rather than later.

"Did you look when we left?" The young man glanced up at him, unimpressed. "Stale coffee and those weird puck sausages that I'm not convinced are actually meat. They _squeak_ , like they're rubber or something, when you eat them."

"At least the rooms seemed clean enough." Loki shrugged. He stacked the two empty cartons together and nudged them towards the trash bin. "They put me in Uruguay two weeks ago for some trifling matter that did _not_ involve murderous robots, and I slept one night in a cargo container with a corrugated surface. It rained that night, naturally. Every drop that ricocheted off the roof, I heard. After that? Strange how you become fractionally less picky. There was a thin pillow and the stiffest quilt I've touched last night, and I was still not tempted to throw a fit."

"Fewer tantrums you have, everyone stays that much happier. It's really nice, actually." The gingery head didn't come up to look at him.

"You know," Loki said, his words sarcastic and conversational both. "I'm truly heartened that becoming more familiar with my presence lets all you lot think you can snipe with me and get away with it." He sighed as Fitz nearly giggled himself into a choking fit. "And I, in fact, let you get away with it. Maybe I _should_ have gotten that appointment."

" _Hey!_ " The voice rose up from somewhere along the street between them and the clinic.

"Oh, Gods. Finally." Loki elbowed away from the rickety card table set up outside the street vendor's truck and stood up. Turning around showed him the man walking forcefully down the street towards them. He looked the human over – ordinary enough, near the middling of age, clad in khakis and a clean black polo shirt. Tall, with a strong, square face and hair cropped close enough to nearly hide the thick white streak that cut through the black. His skin was a russet brown, reddening lighter along the cheeks and brow with exertion and annoyance as he jogged up a few steps closer. Contrasted sharp against his fingers was the card Loki left with the nurse. "Dr. Jericho Drumm, yes?"

"Who the hell are you?" The man's light brown eyes studied him, then narrowed at Loki's pleasant smile. He dropped the card onto the tabletop and shoved a finger at it. "No games. If you're going to put _that_ on your sigil, you don't get to play games with your name without a callout." Drumm made a grumbling noise. "Though part of me has to admit the joke fits the motif."

Fitz looked from Drumm to Loki and back again. "I thought it was just your name and number?"

"So to speak, Fitz, that's precisely what it was." He turned back to Drumm with an easy smile. "No game has been played, Doctor. No jests."

" _Loki."_ The eyes never left his face. The jaw set into something firm, Drumm seeing something not visible. "Not my pantheon, but I know a few neo-Odinists that wouldn't be amused. You really going to stand by that?"

"And do any of them get a call back from the All-Father? Because _I_ would be deeply surprised." Loki shrugged the challenge off. "He's not really much of a one for maintaining steady contact, though I suppose he could have worse intent. Tell your asatru would-be they might be better off with someone a titch more reliable when it comes to answering the rituals. Also, we're aliens, not wholly gods. So regretful, really." He looked up at the sky, mournful. "I try." He looked down again. "Well, perhaps not as much of late. I blame the economy."

"In any case, you're a sorcerer. Not a bad one, either, by your mark. But the name? You have to know that's the equivalent of claiming Napoleon's lineage in a past life." Drumm's arms came up to cross against himself. "And now you're in Nicetown hassling _me_. Fine. Let's let the name go a moment. What's this about?"

"I would like your help."

Drumm puffed out a startled laugh. "I don't practice-"

Loki cut him off smoothly. "Openly, of course. And I shouldn't need your practice. Your methods are your own and none of mine; no place where our powers overlap. Leave them to mystery if we must; I'll not have the tactlessness to meddle with your honored spirits. Whether you believe in my name or no, know I know better than to do such."

"What, then?" Drumm's gaze left his face to examine Fitz. The light brown eyes looked _through_ him. "Kid's not an apprentice?"

Fitz barked a startled laugh.

"He's a scientist and something of a colleague. I come on a stranger matter." Loki smiled, enjoying the small joke. "A Doctor Strange."

Drumm's eyes rolled up to the sky in disgust. He picked up the card and pointed it at Loki. "Let me stop you right there and get myself back to work. I told them I'd be gone less than twenty, and I got a kid on the schedule in an hour that needs me way more than you do." He turned away and started walking back.

"Strange is not my friend, no more than he is yours, I think. No enemy either, and yet." Loki cocked his head, watching the back tense as he spoke. The steady walk paused, at least. "He is arrogant, powerful, secure in both his position and place. He doubts nothing and questions little. In a great number of ways, Drumm, I'm worse. Not all the legends are lies – although many are. And now he's fixed his eye on me, through a small matter that binds our paths for a time. I wish to know why I've drawn that eye. I wish to know the nature of this thing he's lost. To do that, I believe I need _your_ eye. To better understand the man I'm dealing with."

Drumm turned slightly to regard him one more time. The card flickered and snapped sharply through his fingers while he seemed to think.

Loki baited the rest of the hook, watching the unwilling curiosity creep onto the brown face. "Come now, would it be so cheap an offering to be owed a favor by one who at _least_ holds the name of a God?"

A pen appeared from somewhere within Drumm's pockets. He scribbled a location and a time on the back of the card, then walked back towards Loki to hand it over. "Tonight. You get an hour, same as any other consult of any other type I'd give." He looked down at Fitz. "You can consider yourself invited, but it might get boring for a scientist."

"Nothing about this is boring." Fitz grinned up in response.

"You'd change your mind after about ten minutes of discussion of ley line geometry." Drumm sighed. "Not that I think we'll get that lucky with the conversation."

"He might not, actually." Loki studied the card, ignoring the look Fitz gave him. "Uptown?"

"That's my office. You'll need to ring the buzzer twice, security gets touchy about new guests after six." Drumm looked down at Fitz one more time. "By the way, that truck's been cited three times in the last six months that I know of for food poisoning complaints."

Fitz swallowed hard as Drumm walked away, the expression on his face suggesting the pasteles had reformed solidly in his throat. "I've got a good constitution." He looked up at Loki, who could probably eat a rotting goat without physical complaint. "Is there a spell for food poisoning, though, just in case?"

Loki smiled down at him, false reassurance on his lips. "I don't know, Fitz. I might have forgotten all about it during one of those _tantrums_ I was so known for." The smile turned into a toothy jackal's grin of delight at the death stare he received in return.


	7. Keys

7\. Keys

. . .

Skye looked up from her laptop when the Director walked into the small, quiet office she was commandeering for her private project, the light from the display making the tired circles under her eyes more pronounced. "'Sup, boss?"

"You know you don't have to get all your work done overnight, right?"

She flapped a gauntleted arm at him, feeling the bones crackle in her wrist as she did so. She'd gone too hard in her last practice session, swallowed too much of her own ability back down in a control experiment. Well, at least everything was mostly quiet for a bit. "I'm fine. After everything in the last few months? This is pretty relaxing." She grinned at Phil as he dropped into the seat next to her and tugged at her screen to look at the handful of dossiers she was going over. "I think I have some more possible candidates, but I gotta really chew it over."

"And how's the rest of our people? Sorry about asking you to monitor that on top of everything else you're juggling."

"Dude, it's fine. It's just my turn for a quick siesta after May comes back." She stuck the tip of her tongue out between her teeth at him, leaning back to cross her sore arms across herself. "Anyway, nobody's doing much of anything. Bobbi and Lance are being disgustingly cute somewhere again. Mack's fine. He's been pretty much on a constant tour between engineering and the cafeteria. I'm pretty sure he's picking out apology cards to Fitz on the Hallmark website. We're all kind of holding up. Eating our emotions and working things out."

Phil leaned back in his chair, nodding slowly. "We'll find Jemma. Whatever happened down there, we'll get it sorted out. We don't let our people stay lost." He sighed. "And Loki?"

"Phone tag puts him in Philadelphia. Fitz is sticking by his side, although he's logging in regularly to feed data through the system on whatever David Blaine crap happened to that wall you guys checked out." She caught his look. "Yeah, Loki didn't log a reason for the city. I did check, there's at least one personal contact of Strange out there, probably it." She grinned as Phil slumped a little, rubbing the side of his face with his good hand while he considered that. "No unusual emergency calls. He's just nosing around. So, two things. One question, one detail you should know."

"What's the detail?"

"Tony Stark's poking around the system." She giggled when Phil slumped down even further, eyes rolling up to the ceiling. "I think he scanned Loki's phone, jacked the operating system's backdoor open while he was in the tower. We _did_ build part of our cell network on his product line. But we've got security redundancies and _me_ , so he didn't get far and I've got him chasing dead ends all over the place. That buys a little time before he starts trying to jingle your private line for the surprise of his life. So, I was actually gonna come up in a while and suggest a compromise."

"God, the nosy son of a bitch. Hit me."

"I'm just gonna give him the Strange case file, since he's acting so curious. He can noodle over that all he wants while he's flopping around his tower. Maybe he'll even come up with something for Fitz to chase down, since we're not getting much on the hotlines."

Phil frowned, considering it. "It's not a terrible idea. Don't pass that along to Loki until you've got to, though. Let's try to keep 'em separate from here." The expression on his face held doubts that would work for long.

"What, you think a rap battle would break out?" She giggled again when Coulson's face contorted, considering that mental image.

"I just sort of promised Loki I wouldn't stick him with the guy. What was the question?"

Skye tabbed over to the file in question, pulling up the composited image of the stolen artifact that had been compiled from both Strange's notes and the imprint the item left in its display case. "How exactly is that thing a 'key?' It looks more like a really wild tent stake."

Phil leaned over to examine the digital recreation, frowning. The Promethium Key was almost ten inches long and looked, true to Loki's vague description of the element, like it was cast crudely from rusty red pewter. The pommel had been carved into both triunes and thick dualistic patterns, although the 'faces' of some of these images weren't clear in the recreation – blank spaces and deep pocks that indicated what might be eyes. Too many eyes, if that was the case. Maybe the carvings simply weren't clear in reality, maybe the description sucked. The handle was short and deeply cut into the single unbroken piece of other-dimensional metal, and never designed to be comfortable in a human's hand. Instead it looked ready for something to coil into it, with small dimples to grip. The rest of the item was indeed much like a stake. It was tri-bladed and there was the impression of something decorative slithering along each inner edge.

Phil reached out and scrolled down the transcribed notes from the sorcerer, sounding out the word ' _phurba,'_ and then selecting the hyperlinked dictionary entry. As he read, his brow furrowed. "Dunno. It's Tibetan?"

"Think it just resembles a Tibetan artifact. I know, right? That part you're reading was Strange trying to describe it in sorta-familiar terms. I guess he's out there a lot, so that's why he went that way with the description. But this thing is supposed to, I dunno, stake open doors both spiritual and physical? Lock out demons? God, so weird. I don't know." She curled her lip at the screen. "I can't put my finger on why, but the thing looks kinda gross. Might be the tacky carvings on the butt." She tabbed back away and looked at him. "So... if it's supposed to be inert now, what was it meant to open or whatever before?"

Coulson didn't have an answer for her.

. . .

"I met Stephen when I was on a neurology tour at Johns Hopkins, almost twenty years back." Drumm creaked his chair back, watching Loki steadily in return as the demigod watched him while he spoke. Loki kept his face placid, listening to the shift in the psychologist's voice as he began to wend down the path of old memories. "He was on his residency year and already on his way to making a legend of himself in the operating room. He kept himself separate, always talking like he was on another level than anyone else. Always this thin line of distant sarcasm." Drumm's eyes unfocused, looking elsewhere.

"The kind of arrogance that was backed by ability."

Drumm nodded. "I still preferred doing rounds with his entourage than anyone else. I grew up in Haiti – born here, raised there, came back to the States before I was a teen. Just enough to get the creole accent for a while. Just enough to get used to life in Port-au-Prince. And these kids at the hospital, you know... half of them are in there on their parent's money, the other half on the kind of inward-turning focused drive that doesn't put them in the real world much. Didn't matter that I was in the latter group, too. For a lot of them, I was in another one entirely." He gave a wry smile.

"And you had trouble fitting in. They gave you ill-made places to stand, so they might look at you as the other. Whether they intended harm or no with that." Loki cocked his head, considering that with a fleeting internal hint of sympathy. "The hierarchy of social nonsense. There must always be the bottom of the structure."

That got a laugh out of Drumm. "Some of the kids then, you ask them to picture Haiti in the Eighties, they'd come up with, I don't even know, a mental image of the native peoples of the Amazon. And the other old stereotype." Another laugh, a sardonic one that barely hid anger. "They used to call me ' _Brother Voodoo_ ' in my classes. When the professors weren't listening, of course. Got worse in my third year, when some enterprising asshole got at my contact list and found out about my older brother still on the island." The lips tightened. "Who was, in fact, a _houngan_ of no small reputation _._ Lots of childhood memories of him at his work among the spirits, tying together the mundane and the divine. I believed when I was a child, of course. There were things I saw... still remember seeing... Later, I wondered if it was all just gaps your brain fills in to make sense of things, even when that patch job doesn't quite match up. Especially when what he was made it difficult to live my own life. Easier to believe it was all made up."

Loki clasped his hands together in his lap. Next to him, Fitz fretted at his notes. The young man was listening to Drumm's tales and riddling at the mystery of Strange's wall at the same time, brow knotted at something in the numbers. "And that's why you went to the science of the mind? Looking to find out where the lies truly were, looking for the ghosts poking their cold fingers around in the human brain."

"Very astute." Drumm reached down and pulled open a drawer in his desk, rummaging for something. Loki could hear the scrapes and the rustling of thin, cheap paper. "Of course, _we_ both know the truth is stranger than that. But then? The nickname was an albatross. I would have loved to lash out over it. And then you're the angry black kid with a rep and nobody signs for your residency. So I sucked it up, because it's what you did to survive in that kind of environment." A handful of files slapped onto the top of Drumm's desk with a heavily weighted sigh. "You pick your battles. Eventually, I picked a hell of a one."

"Strange?" asked Fitz, jerking up from his screen.

Drumm nodded. "He said it _once._ That nickname. We were out behind the hospital, taking our fifteen minutes to pound down some food and caffeine before going back in for another eight hour tour. We'd talked before. Then he went there, half a compliment, half all the crap I was fighting to not be. Looking back I know he felt it was a joke and he meant no harm. But it harmed, alright. The nickname sounded _worse_ coming out of his mouth, with that thin sarcasm and that concrete sense of his own place."

Loki watched the psychologist as he continued. "I went after him. Didn't think, just went. We tumbled across the trash cans and the first thing he did was beg. _Not the hands, please. Please, no._ Earnest. And then an apology. Yeah, also earnest." Drumm shrugged, looking away from Loki's steady, assessing stare. "He never said it again. It didn't fix everything between us – I _never_ forgot that his first thought was for himself and not what he said to me - but he gave me full respect after that. Never reported the incident. And he never said it again. Not even after the... the accident. Not when he was nothing but a ball of rage. Not even later, when we met again and we'd both found ourselves on new paths. He knew better. And he could see what I'd learned, too. We're not friends. But I don't hate him, either. He's on his own road. I've got my own to worry about."

The air conditioner clicked on, rumbling a soft noise behind the walls. Drumm looked up at it, his eyes focusing on the present again. He leaned forward, hovering over the stack of papers he'd pulled out. "You ever see him on the late shows?"

Fitz was the one to make a confused face, jolting up from his notes. "I didn't know he did those."

"On occasion. Every couple of years he crawls out of Bleecker Street to show off. He's taken over for James Randi. He smokes out the card sharps, the cheats, the scammers that want to tell you your dear departed Aunt Daisy's last wish for a nominal credit card fee. That'd be fine, kid. I approve, believe me. But it's the way he does it. Go to Youtube, find some of his appearances. Letterman, summer of '99. That's a good one. Watch his face. He's got this smirking twinkle in his eye, like he knows all the secrets and you don't. The people he's chasing out are garbage, but him? He's the golden man. The sorcerer _supreme_."

"He stayed arrogant." Loki was unsurprised. He stuck an elbow on the armrest of his chair, comfortably slinging one leg up atop the other as he contemplated that. "The same edge of self-secure infallibility."

"Oh, yeah." Drumm leaned back again. "He never trained that out of himself." With a curving smile, he tilted his head slightly. "He backs up his attitude with his ability, sure. But if there really is a balance to what we do, if nature and the universe rubber-bands us all back into line at need, he's got a smack up his ass coming for his lack of humility. Always been his weakness. That cocksure serenity."

Loki sighed. "I've a few other questions, but our hour draws short too quickly." He flicked a glance at the paperwork. "Unless you've some expansion of our deal in mind."

"I'll answer them. Help you out, not because of your name, but because I went to him a few weeks back and didn't get the help I asked for. First time in five years I come to him in need, and he can't take the time. He was apologetic as hell, granted." Drumm's lips pursed. "Said he was chasing some other matter, something more important to the balance he served. Might be what he's chasing still, that gets _you_ here under his eye. Anyway, he was half-there, barely listening to me. So you can keep asking your questions, ' _Loki',_ but I'm calling in my favor now. Since he won't, you will."

That got the demigod's eyebrow to arch. He stretched out a hand in acceptance. "Name it, then."

Drumm's brown fingers rifled through the stacks, pulling out photos to place them neatly for him to see. "We've got an increase in the city's missing. Maybe you saw some of the posters. Some of them are kids I had on my watch, kids on the edge of making it out. Now, that happens. A brutal truth and not one I like. Especially during the change of seasons we'll have an uptick in disappearances. Some kids get pulled down by the undertow of the streets and they don't come back up. Some wander off to where they think life'll get softer. But there's a _lot_ right now. Just... gone." He kept pulling out photos. "Something's going on out there. My instincts say it's maybe not just my turf, either, but the updated statistics aren't there yet for public access."

Loki glanced at each picture in turn, studying the diversity, the changes from face to face. The majority were young black males, but some women were gone as well. And here and there a paler face. Many of them had something in common, something in the tired eyes that sought what they couldn't find. He ventured a question he was fairly sure he knew the answer to. "The police have assisted you?"

Drumm leaned back hard, snorting. "They took names and copies of the photos and gave me the right assurances. When I called several days later, the desk officer took about an hour to even figure out what the hell I was talking about. Honestly surprised I didn't get hung up on."

He picked up one of the photos, studying the face of a lean copper-brown boy with a broad nose and a high brow. "Could your _loa_ not find them? I'm certain you consulted there next." When silence answered him, he looked up to study Drumm's face to see if he'd caused insult. The man looked only pensive. "Drumm?"

The voice was reluctant, and a hint of the man's own private art entered the cadence. "Oh, they could find them, god that is no god. Erzuile Mansur always finds her children, and Agwe would guide them if he could. But the lost aren't listening, and I can't see through their eyes. All their senses are full of something else. That's why I went to Strange."

Loki studied the face again and saw that the man was wondering if he should be afraid. Not of him, of course. But of the fate of his lost. His instincts prickled, feeling there might well be something more behind this. Something Strange, in his narrow focus, missed. "Then I will find them, as is our bargain."

That got a smile filtering back to the russet face. The eyes snapped back into focus on him. "As a God?"

"As a God with ViCAP access." He looked to his side, ignoring the joking tone in Drumm's voice. "Can I have you help arrange copies of these? The questions henceforth will be arcane and dull, even for your ravenous curiosity."

Fitz leaned forward and tapped gently at the photos. "I'll go a step further and put some of the names through Skye if you want, get a jump on that." He looked up at Loki's nod, pulling the papers into a neatly stacked pile. "And I'll see if we can do a statistical compile on a few other big cities, see if there's indeed a change in the pattern. Scrape some numbers."


	8. It's All Connected

8\. It's All Connected

. . .

Loki put his cellphone down on the flimsy plywood surface of the hotel room's sole useful desk, shaking his head before looking across the room at the ever-present Fitz. He found the young man staring back at him from a chair, one cheek half-puffed like a chipmunk on the granola bar he was eating. They'd been checked in for three hours since leaving Drumm's office, and for the last two of them he'd been all but hovering. Frankly, it bordered on unnerving. "Don't you have something else to go do besides putter about at my side like some companion animal?"

Fitz gave an enormous swallow. "Not... really."

"You're cutting rather heavily into my precious alone time." Loki sighed and spared a glance out the dirty window, watching people pass underneath the nearby bridge in the late evening gloom. The light of a gas station gleamed through the rain, sharp neon flickering like a beacon. "I can't summon lost Miss Simmons from the ether, Fitz. I don't know what's happened to her. I apologize, but I hope that's not what you've been secretly wishing whilst you stick close."

"I'm... I'm not." Fitz winced, the mournful expression he'd had back in Strange's home returning to line his face. "Promise. I just don't like being in the lab without her. And not all is right with Mack just yet, you know? He lied to me, too." He shifted, looking uncomfortable. "I'll forgive him in time, sure. I can do that. But meanwhile, out here at least I'm doing something. I don't like being alone. Not like you do, I suppose." His hands fussed with his tablet, looking down abruptly. "Sorry, wasn't aware I was being a bother."

Loki considered the morose young man. "I still remember quite well our old mistrusts, and so that response continues to confuse me. This... willingness to endure my company. I remember your mislike on the plane, the mistrust in the facility below the ground."

"Where you pulled a fast one on me, if we're talking recollections."

The tiny challenge pulled a half-smile from the demigod. Strange little Fitz, and now not as afraid of him as he once was. "I did. And, grim parallel, it was Simmons what paid first for that. We did not get along, Fitz. How that changes. I suppose you bother less than you might." Loki pulled out another chair from underneath the desk and settled himself on it, permitting a minor defeat. He jerked a thumb at the phone by way of changing the topic. "Skye's found little thus far to match the pattern Drumm claims, but she persists despite uncaring numbers. A slight uptick in the missing in both Chicago and Atlanta, but Chicago in particular is apparently having a rough season of it regardless."

Lights flashed across the bland wall of the hotel room as cars sped through a changing signal. The curtains were thin, far too thin to block much of the glare. Loki stared at them balefully. It was going to be another long night. No matter. When Fitz finally left, he would have much to contemplate while idly passing ever more names through ViCAP - the online federal crime database that tracked and compiled anything from homicides to missing and unidentified persons cases. SHIELD held keys to that system, and that meant he did as well. He might at least be able to discover if any of Drumm's lost were further beyond recovery. It was a start. It was something to do while he continued to consider where the key might have gone, and he'd given his word that he would try.

Fitz made a sympathetic noise, blinking as one of the high beams got him in the face. "Waiting on another call m'self. Someone's running another theory through the system on the wall's morphic structure, studying some of the prior experiments we had on record. Dunno who. Might have some sort of definitive answer soon, although the Director did get an opinion from Fury earlier."

"How's that?"

"Didn't seem to think it was possible." Fitz grimaced in agreement when Loki shook his head. "But as he himself said, he's not entirely up to date. Could have changed."

"Must have. There was simply nothing there of any known magical effect; nothing neither I nor Strange could identify." Loki dropped his chin onto his fist, considering.

"Are there things you don't know?"

"Of course there are. A universe without mystery would be interminably dull." He sniffed, an insulted noise that drew an answering silence from the human. "You'd think _one_ of us would have noticed something, however. Even in our combined arrogance, we're not incompetents." He lifted his head up again as the rain fell heavier, thick droplets pounding against the window. And then stopped; the last gasp of a small squall. "Well, at least there's that," he muttered.

"Sometimes things get missed, though. Like Stark. He set that tracker so damn sensitive; it's _still_ only picking up the two of us if I let it. We both only held the promethium sample for probably scant minutes total. It's simply not that strong, but there it is. Like a damned beacon." Fitz shrugged, then fumbled his way out of his chair. He grabbed the tablet off his knee before it slid to the floor and set it on the table next to him. "Look, I'm going across to that petrol station for something to drink before the rain kicks up again. You want anything?"

The glance he gave in return was a firm negative. Even a few minutes of solitude would be welcome, despite Fitz's harmless nature.

. . .

The suspension bridge filled the sky over Fitz as he ambled towards the gas station that did its business in its shadowy lee. With the night's gloom overhead, the rushing sounds of traffic echoed and rattled down the metal structure and added even more vibration to the surfaces of the puddles he sloshed through.

It was a busy neighborhood, it seemed. Lots of stragglers and wanderers going either deeper into the shadows beyond the bridge to a creaky, rusty pedestrian crossing, or back towards the light up the street, where the busier crosswalks marked the boundary of several connected inner city neighborhoods. Fitz, no longer a stranger to keeping at least a weather eye on his surroundings, glanced now and again at other people coming out of the station. One held the door open for him when he reached the large full-service Chevron building and its buzzing overhead lights. When he whirled to thank the already drifting man with stammering politeness, he noticed one of the figures underneath the bridge, just on the edge of the light. He didn't know why his eyes picked out that particular person, and his brows furrowed together as he went back to figuring out what he wanted – a diet soda or the guilty, disgusting pleasure of a Yoohoo.

He went with the Yoohoo, and grabbed a bag of crisps to snack on – _chips_ , he forced his mouth to say when he asked someone for the proper aisle. His accent got him enough weird looks, and the still-occasional stammer even more if he was unlucky. In a fit of eager diplomacy, he also grabbed a little bag of plain almonds stamped helpfully with the word 'organic.' In this case, the word meant an extra twenty cents charge for the iffy promise of no added chemicals, but it might also appease the picky demigod back at the hotel.

When he was done, it was his turn to hold the door for a pair of college kids nattering on about the deli counter inside. Past them, his gaze flickered to the spot underneath the bridge he'd seen.

That someone was still there, and this time he saw why.

 _He's staring at me. Not at the station. Not at the hotel. Me._

Lance had sung for _hours_ at him once, regaling him with all the ways to study a stalker without letting on that you'd done more than glance. In fact, he'd said, that was sometimes a vital key – don't pretend _too_ hard that the watcher had gone unnoticed, either. Glance, because instinctively people know when they're being watched, and then seem to forget. Act like there's no threat, but plan for every step taken with them in tow.

Fitz shivered, feeling a chill in the air following behind the recent rain. He traced his path slowly back towards the hotel, his ears straining until he heard – yes. Another set of steps that stumbled into a puddle to warn him. Not hurrying. Just pacing behind him.

He didn't run, though his heart began to thump hard in his chest. If he could, he'd get a proper look at his stalker when they got to the lights of the hotel. But until he had to – he wouldn't run.

. . .

Loki tapped quickly across the keys of his laptop with one hand, watching as the database immediately told him again that there was no record of the name entered. His other scratched a thin strikeout line across his photocopies, never missing a step as he entered the next missing boy's name. The only thing that slowed him were the chunky loading times of the ViCAP system and the spotty hotel WiFi. Things he couldn't force. Well, not without causing some form of an incident, and so he permitted the network to keep its trudging speed.

He paused only when his phone started to hum softly in the default tone, scooping up the device without looking at it. "Skye?"

 _"_ _My moon, my stars. Hey, Buffalo Stance. How's tricks?"_

He froze at the distinctly masculine voice. "Stark," he started, managing to not sound strangled. Much less surprised. He refused to lose _that_ battle. "I'm waiting on a call from someone I'd much rather talk to."

 _"_ _Is she cute?"_

His thumb hovered over the End Call graphic as he realized he was immediately sneering at the far wall. That wearying irreverence. "I refuse to answer that. What do you want?"

 _"_ _I tried to jingle your sidekick – so weird, people, like, willingly hanging out with you but apparently there it is – and I must have got him in the jakes or something."_ Loki stood up before the man finished rambling, pushing aside the nearly translucent curtain the rest of the way to study the station across the lot. On the other side of the line, he could hear Stark shifting comfortably. He pictured the human half-bent up in a plush seat, feet dangling in the air while he pestered the demigod because he could. _"So I thought, why the hell not, might be a laugh. Anyway, you should know - you guys got played."_

He barely absorbed that, leaning forward for a few extra inches of sight range. No sign of Fitz. His lips pursed. Likely the human was either finishing his transaction, or possibly down in the lobby. Perhaps he'd even retired to his own room, for a wonder. He looked up, making sure the rain had still ceased. He didn't need a watch to gauge time. Only twenty minutes or so had passed. He would wait another five or ten before seeking Fitz. "How do you mean, Stark?" he asked, still studying the wet parking lot and the concrete walks. He didn't bother to question Stark's surprise involvement. The man was the curious type. Probably forced a copy of the case to his own hands. _Although I might find cause to needle Coulson later for this interference._ There was some solace in that.

 _"_ _No 'Men Who Stare At Goats' action. Your thief over in Greenwich Village didn't come through that wall. Nothing and nobody came through that wall. It's physically, technologically impossible."_

His fingers curled harder around the phone, ignoring the unintelligible reference. "You're certain of that? Tell me how."

 _"_ _Fitz – that his name? I never remember. Good brain, though. He's right on the edge of the resolution, I just finished crunching the numbers from all your scans to check his work like two minutes ago."_ That matched. The young man spent much of the last two hours fretting hard at his tablet, connecting remotely with the brainier computer systems back at the Playground. _"It's the Los Alamos experiment, just like Fury said in the file. Now with a bit more window dressing to make it look cooler. The morphic matrix never resolves. It's not a stable enough warp. You could MAYBE wedge a three-atom-wide nanowire through like the world's tiniest fishing line, but better odds what comes through the other end would be a gnarly snarl straight of out a transporter accident on Star Trek."_

A slow rasp of inhaled breath through his teeth answered that. For all his enormous flaws, this was Stark's field to be sure. As much as sorcery was his. If Fitz's numbers matched the Avenger's – and Loki held few doubts that they wouldn't...

 _Fitz was right, and so he earns his place afresh despite my grudging nature. What else did you miss, Strange? What did_ I _miss?_

 _"_ _You there?"_

"I am." He kept his voice even, finally letting go of the curtain. Still no sign of the young human, only the night's wanderers filtering back and forth across the lot. A handful knotted together by the cars far off to the side, at the edge of the lot's light and he studied them. Something prickled at the back of his skull. It was likely only the faintest touch of worry for a human functionally under his care and so he pushed it aside. "I'm sure Fitz would like a copy of your results."

 _"_ _Batching together a dropbox as we chit-chat. Any luck with your mystery mineral?"_

"No sign as of yet, but we've only just begun. If there's nothing else-" He whirled in place when something scratched at the outside of his door. His free hand lifted, ready for blade or spell when the clatter came again, but his senses paused him as he recognized something intangible on the other side. He let himself relax again. Only the boy. No need to fret after all.

 _"_ _Sound busy. I'll jingle again later. Byeeeee!"_ The line clattered and cut out on Stark's obnoxiously cheerful departure.

Loki dropped the phone as Fitz flung himself inside, taking a step forward at the tense look on the human's face. A small paper bag was clenched in one hand, which trembled. "What happened?"

The other hand came up to point out the window, his voice thin and stretching into a surprised crack. "I found some of the missing. At least one whose face I saw. Rather, they found _me._ Loki, they're watching the hotel. I don't bloody know why."

He turned and looked out the window again. No dramatic line of staring opponents as the tone suggested. Even the knot of nighttime wanderers by the cars were gone. Nothing met his senses. The troubled sensation came back despite this, stronger now. "Fitz, there's no one out there."

"There were! One followed me back from the station!" Fitz lunged up next to him, the bag dropping onto the desk so he could grip the sill with both hands. He leaned hard into the glass, making it squeak as he dragged his cheek to get a better view. "I promise you!" He jerked when Loki dropped a hand on his shoulder, trying to calm him.

"Step away before you somehow plunge yourself through." He turned to watch Fitz go to the photocopies, rummaging through them. Fitz lifted one to show, another lost boy's face. All round with hungry, deep-set eyes. There was only conviction in the scientist's own. "I believe you," he said. He did; that young face held not a single lie. "Now sit and _breathe_."

Fitz took a shuddery inhale. And then a reedy scream came from outside, interrupting whatever he was going to say. Loki put his hand out again, keeping the human from rushing yet again to the window. He turned to look himself, peering down through the gloom and the resuming rain to see what the ruckus was.

Just beyond where the cars were, a white symbol was crudely painted onto the concrete. A simple wide eye staring emptily up at the black sky, the iris not round but made of a handful of choppy lines instead. As Loki studied it, marking it well in his memory to recall at need, the increasing rush of new rain began to immediately wash it away.

The abrupt chime of Fitz's email -Stark's files - nearly made them _both_ jump.

Nearly.

Instead, his pale hand gripped the sill, much as the boy had. With only a minor struggle, he shoved the creaking window open to let the rain hit his face as he examined the scene outside one more time. _Someone_ was toying with them.

And still, his senses found nothing. He stretched them further and realized there was truly _nothing._ As if even those few by the car had simply never existed, despite the evidence of his own eyes.

 _All their senses are full of something else,_ said Drumm.

He slammed the window shut again, the troubled sensation at the back of his mind beginning to chime a full blown warning.


	9. Vaguely Ominous Chanting

9\. Vaguely Ominous Chanting

. . .

Loki had a pattern going – take a glance for passersby that would be startled by his parlor tricks, toss another short-lived magelight under the bridge's pillars to check for a trail or some clue regarding Fitz's unusual stalker, repeat. His other hand idled in his pocket, tapping at the phone as he waited again for Skye's response to what they had thus far. Keeping watch at the edge of the light was Fitz himself, still shivering in the cold and the wet. "You know, when eerie nonsense happens in the dead of night, usually _my_ first idea isn't to _go outside and stare at it."_ Fitz's teeth clacked together as he finished his weak snap.

"I doubt there's a current danger, Fitz. That was a message of some kind, to be sure, but there's still no one out here to trouble us. They said their piece, so to speak, and then left." His clinical tone hid his irritation. As far as he cared, they'd been called out. Challenged. That seldom settled well with him and his driving sense of pride demanded answers to their purpose.

Another light summoned, another harshly highlighted mound of trash and plastering old newspapers. And then the return of the gloom under the bridge. He frowned. Something looked odd about this particular stabilizing strut, its cylinder of concrete driving down into muddy earth. He brought up another glimmer in the palm of his hand and approached.

At first he thought it was just a mark of wear and tear, some scar cracking through the old structure. He tossed the magelight – this one a bit more durable - to its base and looked again getting a better angle on it. No, now he saw it plain.

The same stylized eye, carved shallowly into the material. He frowned, tugging the phone out of his pocket to snap a picture of it. He'd sketched a version for Skye based on a fleeting glimpse, but this one was better. He forwarded it on, then stepped gingerly past a knee-high mound of garbage bags to get a closer look.

"What is it?"

"Same symbol. This one's been here some time. It's lightly carved in, but worn down a bit by the elements. Maybe a few months old, I'd wager, depending on the brutality of the seasons."

"Winter was bad all along the eastern seaboard, for what that's worth. Lots of ice storms." Fitz kept shivering as unseasonably cold fat droplets of rain pattered along the shoulders of his thick jacket. "This should have been Strange's problem."

"That's an apt summary for this entire adventure." Loki let an almost sing-song lilt speak for his clear annoyance. "I told Coulson to throw the whole damn thing back, and what does he do? _Somehow_ gets me to willingly accept the chore." The magelight flickered out, leaving his profile lined only by the distant flicker of a permanently red traffic signal. "One of these days I'm going to discover he's a latent mentalist."

"Maybe you just like... actually doing things instead of having life blow up on you like you're living a Linkin Park album?" Fitz ventured, emboldened by the cold.

"Mentalist." Loki nodded sagely, seeming to ignore the young man. "Mind control. Viruses, brain worms. Kree engineering. Something of that nature. _Far_ more sensible a conclusion."

"Right." Fitz didn't bother to sound sincere.

. . .

Skye pulled the new image out of the email and layered it with the sketch Loki sent earlier and used it to try to refine the tracking program a little more. She readjusted herself by wiggling her butt around the squeaky swivel chair, feet up on the desk while the system continued to process image comparisons. "Honestly, using Google reverse image search would have probably been quicker," she muttered into the bag of nachos she was eating from.

Fourteen more huge yellow corn chips later, she got a tally of initial possible matches. Half of the related images she could dump outright, finding them not much more than sketches from various art websites. Then she trimmed out optometrists and eyeglass manufacturers.

Half a glass of water, and another two hundred possibles down the drain. "How much eye-related crap is _out_ there? Ugh."

And then, ten minutes of quick-fingered sorting later, she regarded the sparse, almost entirely black homepage with a bemused frown. "Okay! That's creepy as hell."

. . .

The phone began to buzz in Loki's hand as the pair slumped against the outside wall of the oversized gas station. This time he checked the screen to be damn sure it wasn't Stark and his merry chirping, then accepted the call. "Any results?"

 _"_ _Well, if your eyesight ever goes, I think I've found every optometrist on the web. But more importantly, congratulations. You found a newborn baby cult! Man, everybody gets a website these days. Semi-slick, too. No more scrubby Angelfire domains for these guys. Go big or go home._ "

Loki looked up at the sky, allowing himself to feel down to his bones the inner deadness of his total lack of surprise. He greeted the sensation with a slow blink of his eyes.

 _"_ _Seriously, only you would stumble on something like this while handling a basic theft, right? I've got a website; introductory splash page is an exact match for your symbol, some kind of creepy screed underneath. I'll read it off to you if you want, but I don't recommend going to it direct on your phone. Sites like this tend to collect viruses. Most search engines set up a block. Anyway, it's got a password entry which I slipped past cuz they're not very secure, but the only thing it leads to is what looks like a bare bones phpBB forum. Better than that, though, when you look under the hood. Gothy McDark custom template, allows anon posting, the titles of all the forums are super drama weirdzo. I can tell they track ip but don't list' em. It'd take me a while to scrape for information. Can tell you this thing's been up about ten weeks or so based on registration. Got a couple admin accounts talking on the regular, I'll collate what I can from there first if you want."_

"What's their statement of collective identity or whatnot?"

 _"_ _Creepy screed,"_ she corrected. Then she pitched her voice into her best Elvira impersonation. _"'You, the lost, are part of the greater sea. You will find yourself cleansed of the cancer tainting this universe in the hours before the end. Come before the mighty; witness the approach of strange aeons. Open the door, ye mighty! Step through and behold us! We we will restore the balance in your name, and bring the forever night for your glory!'"_ She cleared her throat, not noticing how cold the silence became on the other end of the line. _"That is some straight up tabletop RPG action right there."_

He vaguely noticed Fitz staring at his hand, seeing how white the knuckles were gone around the phone. He eased his grip – no value in snapping the device. He smiled, less out of any real emotion than to get the tension out of his voice. "This long since stopped being a basic theft. We've stepped in something here."

 _"_ _What makes it all bonus weird? The fact that now you got a locked room mystery to sort out, too? I heard the news. Stark, like, cc'd everyone just to be a putz."_

"Not just that. This was supposed to be Strange's problem. But he was too _fixated_ on something else to notice, and so now it's ours." He shook his head, grimacing. "And we did not find this new cult. They found _us,_ and mere hours after learning the faces of some of these lost _._ We need to puzzle out how that occurred."

 _"_ _Some of the forum titles, if you're hopped up on a lot of caffeine and old Ministry albums, might be like region headers. I'll see if I can find any chatter for your area. Maybe your Drumm dude was being watched."_

"He would have..." He stopped himself, the corners of his lips drawing down as it pieced together a few unpleasant thoughts. _Their senses are full of something else... and they did not alert mine, save for that warning I felt when they called for our attention._ "Do that, please. Look for viable patterns, some method of how they come to our trail."

 _"_ _Will do. You gonna bug outta the city?"_

He huffed, insulted. He did not miss Fitz's shoulders slumping slightly – clearly the scientist thought that retreat might be the better part of valor. "Not yet. If they've a lick of sense, they won't discuss meeting halls in their forum, whatever they think of their privacy. I'm going to track them as best I can from the streets, see if I can answer these questions from another angle."

 _"_ _You're re-prioritizing? Coulson'll give you a look if you veer too off course from the main job. I'm not picking you out, dude, he'd do that to anybody."_

"I'm not sure I'm wholly off course yet." He watched Fitz's eyebrow raise and addressed his next words to both. "As I say, this was to be Strange's matter, but he missed it in favor of his own narrowed focus, some matter of the natural balance of magic. In his fervor to work on that, he fixated on me. And here I am, standing between these two matters. Because of him. And, to a lesser extent, because of Drumm. That's a pattern, Skye, an odd triangle of interconnections."

 _"_ _Because you_ just happened _to visit his buddy who had a missing persons case on his hands?"_

"That's why I ask you to search that forum. If they didn't come after us this night because they were watching Drumm... then they were watching for us regardless. I need to know if that's the case. That may be the crux of the mystery. If we were not met by this faction this night, then perhaps somewhere else. It's not a coincidence then. It becomes a matter of Drumm's instincts being the better here, some siren in the sea of fate that _three_ skilled magicians have been drawn in by. And he was the one that saw this danger, because he'd been the one actually _watching_."

 _"_ _You're rolling a lot of ifs there."_

"I'm thinking out loud. You lot get less nervous when I do that." He rolled his eyes at the sing-songed ' _truuuuuue_ ' that trilled out of the connection in response. "But this hinges on what information we can find next. I don't forget the initial matter that puts me here."

 _"_ _I'd ask if you want us to send another team out to Bleecker to do another deep physical scan, but with the only technological possibility we had off the docket then our folks are going to find diddly. We're due to send another update, and it's your call if you want to just dump the bad news on Strange."_

"I'll handle him." Loki pinched his fingers across the space between his brows, steeling himself for _that_ call.

 _"_ _Cool. He does this quasi-English uptight drawl into the phone that's like six times more obnoxious than your accent. You kind of just want to feed him weird words to see how they'd sound. Like 'mayonnaise,' or maybe 'penguin.' Although maybe I'm just used to yours. Anyway! I'll pass all this on up the food chain. Have fun!"_

Fitz mouthed the word 'penguin' at him, brows furrowed up in confusion. Loki shrugged back, hanging up. He didn't know, either.

. . .

"You have my gratitude for not being rude," managed Strange. His email chimed as the solicitous demigod passed along the final scientific findings on the matter of the wall. In response, his gloved finger tapped idly against the armrest of his office chair.

The responding voice was wry gravel. _"Would hardly be fair – whatever was missed, well, I found no flaw, either. So it must be something slight, something rare even against our combined knowledge of the art. You told us the artifact was inert, Strange. A relic of a dead world, a key with no door. I must ask – are you certain of this?"_

"I saw its silent, red sands with my own eyes, Loki of Asgard. Nothing of life remains in that place and the door was well sealed."

 _"_ _You are sure?"_ In making his voice respectful and painfully polite, it held the most subtle knife of an insult. The worst of it was, Strange felt fairly certain the sharpening of that insult was his own doing. He'd missed something. His own vision walks were underlining that. His inability to find an obvious flaw in the demigod's chain of life. He swallowed, all but unable to answer. Instead, Loki spoke again. _"What was the nature of that realm? As I've said before, I've heard of promethium in the most scholastic and distant of senses, but I know little of its relics or their source."_

"It was an 'otherplace,' a limbo dimension. Once lively and prosperous, it was corrupted by sorcerers over countless millennia and left to wrack and ruin. A repository of demons, later. Its last ruler had some ambition of tying it to somewhere else, forging some horrible pact with a connecting dimension. Some of my... predecessors had a hand in containing the matter, under the guidance of our sponsors. When I saw it, it was a place of dry, red sand and the wind carried only old despairs. The kings and sorcerers were all gone. Even that last. Lost to madness and death."

 _"_ _I am forced to ask – and those last have bodies well laid to rest? You have seen their bones?"_

Strange gritted his teeth, irrationally annoyed. "The last great sorcerer of that limbo, a dead-hearted being named Belasco, fell into the black night when the end of his plane's final age drew close and the boundaries of their reality itself tore apart."

There was a long pause. _"Such falls... tend to be surprisingly survivable."_ Another pause followed before he spoke again, this one chilly and full of bitter knowledge. _"I would know."_

When the demigod rang off, Doctor Strange put the phone down in a slow, smoothly serene gesture. His face held none of that grace, the lips twisting briefly in frustration. When he looked up, his assistant was framed in the doorway. The look of fresh determination on his assistant's - his _friend's_ face eased his frustration.

They would begin the search of the mansion anew – and this time, they would spare no possibility and they would look through _every_ veil. This would not stand unresolved.


	10. An Illusive Man

10\. An Illusive Man

. . .

There were ways to move fluidly on the street regardless of the time without the need for true invisibility. Loki knew his clothes were clean and plain underneath the simple illusion he wove, but what those better-off others saw forced their gaze to slide over him without really looking. The holes in the hoodie's elbows that showed a filthy and tattered undershirt, a pair of jeans dark with grime and unidentifiable old stains. Threads trailed from the bottom of the jacket, snarling and tangling and easily caught by walls as he scraped by, making soft wheedling noises as people dodged around him. The kind of shiftless, lost look that people believed they could smell.

And so, they forced themselves to not see the thin, pasty man with the dead eyes and the tangled hair. Just like they didn't see any of the others he'd passed when tracing trails up narrow alleys – but _those_ survivors saw him. For them he wove the rest of the illusion and constantly adapted it to fit their patterns as he spared a couple of days hunting trails. No real stench came from him, not like many who still had homes would have assumed. There was the undertone of a chlorine smell from the public pools and showers that many tried to use. The bleachy spots on his clothes where he would have tried to keep them clean for any chance at getting free of the street's trap. The snarls didn't go all the way through his hair – there were the traces of a rough comb, and a recent cut to try to keep presentable. And that meant the others who struggled on the streets to survive overlooked him, too.

That let him listen without being marked as the outsider. Mostly they muttered to each other in neat packs; service hours of the nearest soup kitchen, what to do when the library card got lost, an opportunity coming up the next morning in front of the nearest hardware store if one of them were the least bit handy. And the faithful, and the broken in their tighter knots, clutching to what religion they had left. They looked at him and they looked away.

Until Loki found a few of the street people whispering together, miles away from where he'd begun his walks through the other side of Philadelphia life. Rumors led him in this direction – the weird ones, the ones who seemed to _like_ the street now. The ones with a leader. These people had something new in their eyes – something almost like hope. Many of them had colored scraps and straps of cloth wrapped around their wrists, and a different kind of ordered society in the way they talked to each other. A rarity on a lot of the streets he'd been wandering down, and he idled by with a hunk of bread in his hands from a bakery that gave their almost stale loaves away. He offered it around as they murmured to each other, pretending to freeze when one of them looked up at him. "Hi!" he blurted at the shorter man, sounding as much as he could like someone slowly forgetting how to properly socialize.

The man studied him with raw curiosity, his eyes shiny and bright. "Are you looking for the way?"

His fingers knotted hard into the loaf of bread by way of trying to not drop it in startled fright at the abrupt question. His mouth worked to try and find the words, and he said nothing. It worked – the bright eyes began to match an honest, welcoming smile. "It's all right. You've been out here a long time."

The bread suffered in place of his frayed pretend nerves. He managed a weak nod and a hopeful voice that still came out in a mumble. "What way? Bus station? I tried. Can't afford it."

The shorter man laughed, but he did it in a way that was designed to not make someone feel insulted. Beginner's charisma. This one was the temporary leader of this small group. "No. Not at all." Without any disgust, he took Loki's elbow gently and pulled him closer to the group. "A different way to get free of the fear of the streets. Another door to walk through."

"...Suicide?" he all but squeaked, a tiny lost soul in a tall and starving form. _Doors again_. _And me in search of a key._ He noted that down while his question got a roaring laugh. He cringed a little, trying to not be frightened. And, of course, he wasn't.

And then they began to talk.

They talked of doors, of prophecies, of places to belong. They talked about the end of death itself, and the promise of a rebuilt utopia, there first for those who had the strength to behold what might come. Those honed by being lost for too long. They talked of guides and finders and jumbled their stories together about how each of them found their way to the Way. And Loki listened close and found all of it hollow, trimmed with charisma and illusion and the art of feeding on someone else's hungry need, those arts he knew all too well. But instead of arguing he only smiled and knotted his hands and nodded in the right places.

Almost two hours of misshapen philosophy later and murmuring around the name of some new God they wouldn't quite say, he had the address of a meeting hall. A ruined building several miles away, a place where the police wouldn't bother their gathering. They glad-handed with him and let him depart peacefully, with pleas to see him later. They were new, too. There was value in bringing more possible new acolytes to their gatherings; he could sense that in the way they urged him. They offered to give him a ride, but he shook his head and flexed his hands politely and said he would get there. A normal response. Many of the streetwise locals would never get into a car with strangers.

There was more than one way to get off the street, they knew. And Loki had plans to make meanwhile.

. . .

"I'd tell anyone in the team that this is an awful idea, infiltrating a barely understood cult at one of their homes." Fitz cleared his throat, nudging his tablet around on the plywood desktop with a single finger. "And, and you're like a thousand years old and occasionally still terrifying. So, bearing that in mind, you know what? This is still a rotten idea and I don't recommend you do it. They found us somehow, and we still don't know how. So you go to them?" He shook his curly head rapidly, his slight brogue sounding more gruff when loaded down with concern. "What if they sniff you out?"

"That may well be a risk." Loki shrugged, running a hand through his clean long hair and looking utterly untroubled. "But you're right. This isn't exactly my first spot of trouble even recently, and we're ages away from my first battlefield. I've little to fear, and most of all _you_ are not coming." He smiled slightly, the effect softening his words. "You're the backup plan, the getaway car in case something does, in fact, go awry in line with your fears."

Fitz made a non-committal noise.

Loki studied the withdrawing young man. It was oddly touching to have another fret so openly at his possible fate. Once a rarity. He showed none of this on his face and instead leaned back comfortably in the hotel's relatively soft chair. He was enjoying the lack of stone stoops and cracking concrete underneath him. He felt still unthreatened by those dire possibilities Fitz seemed so concerned with. "Has there been more information from Skye?"

The noise became something firmly negative. "She's fairly certain she's been culling the sub-forum for this city. No mention of Drumm yet. No mention of anything that might be us, either, that she can suss out. All she's got is a lot of fawning over the local chapterhouse lead. Supposed to be a very charismatic sort, one of the favorites of whoever actually leads all this. Philadelphia is apparently quite dear to the founder."

He considered that, frowning. "A name there, for who I'll be seeing tonight?"

"No. Just 'The Guide.' They're all guides. Forum admins, house leaders in other cities, small knots. Guides. Keep very hush-hush like that. Even less for whoever the founder is." Fitz crossed his arms against himself with a bit more authority. "So there's that, too. You're going in with absolutely minimal information."

"And the goal is to come away with somewhat more. Drumm's request is not honored if I merely tell him that his lost want to stay lost, that they've found better kindness in some new perhaps-false god than in the street's old mercies. Bargains seldom work this way, and you do not short-shrift another master of the magic arts." He lifted both his eyebrows, recollecting a few tidbits from a long ago past. "Well, you _can,_ to be sure, but it takes a little planning and practice and I never employed any of that with him."

"He seems the understanding type... if you make it seem like you're not trying to cheat him out of his favor, then-"

"I'm going." His voice was curt. "They chased you, called us out, and there's this insistent obsession with _doors_ and seemingly bodiless eyeballs." He flicked his hand to underline his hostility with the circumstances. "To the first, we seek a key. To the second, Drumm informed me one of Strange's mystic sponsors is just such a being. A God oft incarnate in a single eye; this Agamotto, who once helped shape the Book of the Vishanti itself, apparently. I am not much fond of _coincidence,_ where instead another's deliberate trap may be laid. These two details together?" He looked away with a deliberately annoyed sniff and a _tch_ through his teeth.

Fitz studied him, his face wrinkling as he considered that. "You don't think they're worshipping Strange's benefactor behind his back?"

Loki shrugged again, vaguely irritated with his own lack of knowledge. "Truly can't answer that, Fitz. It's _possible,_ I'd say. It's not beyond a deity to develop an inchoate, dual nature out of the sheer boredom of the infinite. It's also possible we're seeing something that was designed to mock that, a jape that was meant for Strange and comes to our laps instead." He rolled his eyes. "Or there's just a bunch of eyeball Gods floating around the multi-dimensional ether and we've found a coincidence - or perhaps someone in the hierarchy of this organization just truly likes stylized eyes and went with it for the official logo. I note in your marketing the better symbols are the clean and simple ones." He finished with another snappish noise under his breath.

"Well. While you try to not get yourself killed by a bunch of creepy cultists that like to scream outside hotels at innocent people, I'll keep pestering Skye." He shifted, clearly hoping what he said next would go over well. "I've another project in mind. For the key." He grinned a little at the immediate look of interest he got. "I can see what Stark did now; the tight mineral scan he designed on the fly. I _might_ be able to get something deployed on a wider scale."

Loki leaned forward, pleased not only at some progress, but progress despite Stark's notions. "He indicated this was not much like the Tesseract's trace; no broad trail of gamma radiation to follow. Didn't seem to think a wide scan was feasible. Oh, do tell me he's wrong, it'll make my _day."_

Fitz couldn't help a faltering grin at his delight. "Well, not precisely wrong. Coming at it a bit differently, actually. He and Banner were looking for a steady emanation of something active, sure, but what he actually did this time while probably being weirded out about you was make a scanner so bloody sensitive it picks up a bloody tiny particle trail. That's why I kept fussing with it to keep it from bleeping about us. It'd scream at him, too, because you gave him the sample for a bit. Now, yes, you can't get it to magically sense where it is in the world right now from here or whatever, but if you replicate what he did and hijack some TSA and other observation centres and get it to maybe see where it's _been..._ " He spread his hands in example.

"If it went through an airport or some such, left some physical trace of itself on a counter or a bag, you could find a trail to follow. That's what you're saying." He grinned at the set of ferocious nods he got. "That's excellent, Fitz." The scientist all but preened at the guileless praise. "I'm still going tonight."

So touching, the little _arrgh_ of frustration.


	11. Church Potluck

11\. Church Potluck

. . .

Fitz dropped him off several blocks away from the supposed location of the meeting hall, on a blind corner at the edge of the most run-down part of the city with a few dumpsters and other piled up rubble to block any view of what happened next. The man that stepped confidently out of the car in clean, natty-enough clothes, and the slumping, nervously twitching homeless person that shuffled away from the vehicle a second later. Fitz found himself blinking at the figure as he departed, not quite used to the seamless way Loki's illusions flowed around him. At _best_ , a fleeting glimpse of some green shimmer along his outline belied what he'd done, but it was hard to catch.

There was a diner up the way he'd just come, one of the old ones with deep booths and people that minded their own business. The idea of eating a ridiculously large American burger while working with Skye via the phone appealed. Maybe it would calm his nerves.

The demigod might be facing the night with serenity. Fitz had long since gotten used to all hell breaking loose every five minutes, however, and he intended to keep an eye on the 'panic button' Loki arranged with him at all times. It would be nice to be wrong for once. But with Loki?

He shivered behind the wheel of the car.

Maybe he'd get a milkshake, too. Get good and sick for whatever nightmare was about to happen.

. . .

It was an abandoned administration building, possibly once meant for an old sewage office by the heavy smell of water and rot that lurked in its crumbling brick walls. Sounds carried hollowly in the place, little of it ringing quite right in Loki's ears as he filtered along tiny knots of chattering people until he noticed the reason why. Not only was the place disused and crumbling, but much of the metal infrastructure itself had long since been torn out to be ferried away and sold to the highest junkyard bidders. Only the tiniest scrapings of copper remained to show where pipes once tunneled through, and he kept a careful eye on at least one place where the ceilings above might fall through at any moment with the old central conduits gone.

The wide basement of the ruined structure were the most stable; built on solid foundations much older than the rest of the place. There were no windows in the walls for their religious services to be spied on through. Instead, old maintenance catwalks held a few enterprising folks who wanted a hawk's view of the proceedings. The rest slowly filtered onto the open floor of the 'hall,' where much of the rubble had been cleared away or piled neatly into makeshift pews for the adherents to sit. Among these, he saw some of the men who'd invited him here. He made sure he crossed paths with none of them.

Loki found his way to a ladder up to a catwalk, one with a decent view of the front. Not quite an altar there; a long plastic pipe held up a tattered flag they'd pieced together. Of course, the dark fabric bore their mark. The lone eye and its strange iris. A trio of these 'guides' milled nearby, talking to each other with their faces buried low inside hoods made of whatever they could sew together. He couldn't see what they were saying. Based on the faltering religious propaganda he'd been fed earlier, he suspected he wasn't missing much. He leaned against the railing, still careful to look nervous and unsure of his place, and watched as the rest interacted with each other.

. . .

It took an hour before one of the hooded moved to center himself behind the pipe and its makeshift flag. He pushed his hood back to let the visitors see his face, smiling broadly as their breathed _ahhhh_ filled the room. _No one special_ , Loki remarked to himself. _Only a man._ And there was nothing to trouble his senses. He knew better now to let that be his only warning. So he was only a human. The next threat would be what the man might say.

"Friends," said the 'Guide.' "Those who have known our faith, those who are here for the first time tonight. You are welcome." He gave another wide smile, this one earnest and full of true belief. His voice was warm. "You are _home."_

Another exhale from the gathering. Loki watched a smattering of them put their faces in their hands, already on the verge of weeping from the force of some spiritual stress.

"You are not lost, my friends. My brothers, my sisters. You have _never_ been lost. You have been waiting, only. Waiting for Gods. Waiting in the long, silent time for their emergence, waiting for them to hear your prayers and to guide you to what was promised. Whether it be salvation or damnation, an unbroken cycle or freedom from the wheel. Waiting to be shown the way. And these Gods, have they answered?"

 _NO!_

Loki felt his hand instinctively curl around the catwalk's railing at the force of the response.

"No," whispered the Guide into the silence that followed the outcry. He paced on the short stage behind the flag. "Those gods are gone. Mortal after all, taken into Death and revealed as false by its touch. So I bring you the Word."

 _yes,_ they all but hissed back, low and sibilant and ready.

"And the Word is plain. When the ages change, when our true God rises, even Death might die!"

 _YES._

Stronger now was their cry. Loki felt a trace of real – if slight - unease, brought to skin-level by the believer's confidence the Guide put in every word. He looked to either side in the quickest of glances, seeing the others high above with their gazes fixed on the speaker. He knew better than to care for this attempt at calling out Death Herself. He knew she had the inclination to pay such costs back in full, and marked himself lucky that when _he_ had seen her incarnate, she had chosen through some personal whimsy to be an ally. These humans did not know what they were doing, treading in those lands.

The Guide's voice was becoming strident, his fervor lighting his eyes. Corded muscles began to stand out in his throat as he began to stir the crowd into joining his internal frenzy. "This universe is a cancer, choking out the life that might thrive! There is no balance here! Everything ends in death, and that is the ultimate challenge! End that curse, and we will create a new utopia!"

 _BRING US INTO THE STRANGE AEONS!_

The crowd was beginning to sway, a low hum feeding behind the words.

"We serve the True God, the one that but waits behind the door!" Hands rising to the night sky beyond the ceiling. The Guide's eyes were wet, but still the muscles jumped along his throat and jaw.

 _WE WILL BRING HIM THE KEY!_

"And the key to that door has been FOUND, my friends! Even now it travels to the place that was promised. The place of beginnings, where our great founder makes ready the final rites!"

 _Belasco..._ A low, almost orgasmic sigh. Underneath Loki's hand, the railing of the catwalk began to bend under the powerful pressure of his alien fingers. No, he was not his brother. He was not a warrior, made of strength incarnate. But he was growing angry – this strange hodgepodge of heresies against the balance. The threats against Death, she who was the final arbiter of that balance. And most of all, the _key._

 _You foolish little bastards,_ said the grim inner voice that could still bare fangs in every word, and Loki didn't know if he was enraged with this malformed cult or with Strange's stolid insistence that the key had been nothing more than some meaningless trinket. That this 'Belasco' was a dead trail. He should have pressed the sorcerer supreme harder on the matter.

Metal squeaked and pinched. He looked down and forced his hand to relax.

"OUR TIME COMES!" roared the Guide.

And in response, the crowd began to cry out for their new God, their supposed salvation against this 'cancer' that infected, that broke the universe that treated them so shallowly. They cried his name over and over, believing that, unlike all others that might live in the secret places of existence, He heard them.

 _SHUMA!_

 _SHUMA!_

Bodies swayed as one, creaking and bending in ways that would hurt later when the frenzy began to ease, contorting as they danced against each other, their adulate cries becoming shrill and incoherent. The sounds blended together until there was only that name. It meant nothing to Loki, but he marked the sound of it well regardless.

 _SHUMA! SHUMA-GORATH!_

 _OPEN THE DOOR, MIGHTY SHUMA! WE HAVE BROUGHT YOU THE KEY!_

And with a single lift of a finger, the crowd suddenly hushed and fell to its knees. That soft, almost loving sigh filled the congregation hall once more. "And we will bring Him more than that," he said. The gaze flickered up to the catwalk and locked eyes with the demigod. As one, the crowd below turned to behold what their leader saw. The outsider, revealed here among them. In their faces he saw first curiosity... and then real hate.

 _Gods damn you, Fitz,_ Loki thought, not out of any real malice or intent to curse the human. It was the tired acceptance that he was going to have to tell the young man he'd had a point. _It's going to be that kind of night, and I knew that full well. Let's face it. No more lies. On some level, I probably hoped for a good spat._

He let go of the catwalk's railing and stepped back. A few mad humans. He'd walk right out, come to that. Just toss a few out of his way and keep going as he jingled the boy to come pick him up. No problem, really. He'd drop a reminder as he left that _some_ Gods, whether mortal or no, could be real as _all Hel_.

In a fit of pique, he lifted his hand and pinched an insulting little wave of greeting at the Guide. The Guide smiled back in a fearless challenge, the belief he was armored by some other power. Another hooded figure came up beside him and Loki let his hand drop again as _that_ one muttered something guttural into a small box that appeared between her hands.

The dark spilled out from the lid that cracked open, a demon of pure ash and teeth and rage clambering down the front of the robe behind it. Loki stepped back again with only mild surprise as the other guide's cloth ripped itself to shreds from the force of this hellish birthing, the thing beginning to rile itself into a screaming cyclone of fury.

The demonic tornado charged for him through the air as the rest of the adherents on the catwalks clambered down to get away. Loki watched it come to him with a mage's inner tranquility and a private whisper of ' _I had to say something.'_

"We will give you to Him!" sang out the Guide cheerily. "We will sing of His glory!" Loki felt grim pleasure when he noticed the man's obnoxiously happy expression pinching when he immediately fed the demon – only a minor archon of Outer Chaos after all – a sphere full of sparking ice and white fire. Not enough to end or trap it, but he might at least piss it off into a less-resistant physical form. Something he could damage more permanently.

It reared back, the whirl of countless swirling teeth shimmering into the ashen core of itself and then emerging into two huge scythes of pale bone attached to a glistening iridescent mass of scales instead. Something dripped from the jagged tips, a sickly ichor that Loki instinctively could tell would do him no good if it got into his system.

 _Oh, lovely,_ he thought with distant sarcasm, the rest of his mind busy tactically marking out possibilities. _That's absolutely marvelous._ He dodged along the catwalk, nearly taking the tip of one of those massive fangs through his upper arm. Instead his hand snapped out and grabbed at it, wrapping his fingers hard around the bone just inches away from that possibly fatal tip. It tussled with him and he wrapped his other arm around the now-creaking catwalk for leverage.

It began to scream at him, the tangled speech of the damned things beyond the wizarding veil. The gist was plain – pure fury and a demand to let it go. Instead, Loki sneered back at it with fangs of his own and forced himself into the brutal acceptance of what he _could_ do at need. He let his hand flow into that secret blue and from under his grip came the swirling, startlingly pretty patterns of ice up along the hellish ivory. The burning ice of a Jotun's touch, a knife that ran under the flesh and scorched whatever it found into frost-blackened death.

The results it got him undercut the self-hate that came with that particular tool and the teeth he bared changed their meaning from loathing into a kind of ferocious triumph. The demon jerked ever harder to get away from him and the pain he inflicted on it and he refused to let go. His iron will versus its incoherent evil. Ice continued to flow up into the coiling form as it shrieked loud enough to ring in his ears, a trapped sound that would last for hours to come.

In a fit of mindless wisdom, it fell back into shapeless wind to escape and he snarled invective at it in a dozen different alien tongues. Underneath them, the cultists began to break and run. Coils of ash began to snake into the catwalk underneath him and he heard the wires begin to snap from the ceiling. Concrete dust filtered down onto him and he kept snarling, preparing his next attack. To finish the job on him, it was going to have to become physical again.

His wild anger was another illusion. Inside his mind, now forever cold and at his command, he was ready for its next assault. His hand went to his pocket to fumble at the cellphone. If he gauged this correctly, he'd be ready for his ride in just another couple minutes.

. . .

Fitz screeched the car to a halt, staring wide-eyed at the man standing in the road in front of him. The street was dead silent and out of the corner of his vision he saw a piece of wall fall from a ruined building into the interior structure. The man himself – Loki, of course - stared calmly back at him through the windshield, despite being utterly coated in ash and some sort of sticky black ichor. This time, he felt distantly sure he wasn't seeing one of the demigod's illusions.

His hand shaking in worried surprise, he managed to get the window down when the pale fingers reached out to tap on the hood. "Wh-hu-ahhh?" He shut his mouth again and blinked. He started again, realizing he was still blurting. "What in the world happened to you? What is all that?"

"Demon blood. I'm fine. Had a lovely night. As you can see, everyone's fled." The pale, dirty face spread into a toothy smile that was on the shadiest side of sane. "Would you kindly pop the trunk? There should be a blanket back there, we might both prefer I sit on that instead of getting this all over the car."

"D-"

"Demons. Blood. Found out a bit about our key, found out a bit about their 'God,' I've got one _hell_ of a phone-call coming with Strange after a hot shower and several _not_ cheap beers. Trunk, Fitz? I smell. Demons smell when they die, did you know that? It's awful. It's high summer in a rotting swamp, with a little undertone of acrid cheese and burnt ether."

Fitz had not known that. But when the demigod and his wrapped blanket gracefully slid into the backseat of the rented car, he scientifically verified it for all time. They drove back to the hotel in a weird, companionable silence with all the windows open and a cool, dry fan blowing through the vents.

This time it was Loki's turn to hang his head out the window like a half-mad Labrador, occasionally eating french fries out of Fitz's box of leftovers.


	12. Black Sabbath

12\. Black Sabbath

. . .

He could hear Fitz softly clearing his throat by way of giving him an alert as he finished parking the borrowed SHIELD car in the lower bay of the Playground. Loki looked up over the steering wheel and saw Coulson idling in the doorway above, fussing with the edge of his black sling. No staring, no anger, just a man waiting for two of his agents to get back in house and give their updates.

Loki had just gotten through his third beer and was still toweling off his finally-clean hair when the Director called to draw them both back into the fold. Coulson didn't sound stressed, at least; just new things in the wind. Something changed. Apparently Strange had beaten Loki to that phone call – before Loki could contact _him,_ the sorcerer went ahead and lit a fire under the organization with what the demigod could only assume was some new and freshly-scented vision of Hel. Very well, he'd sort that out when he was done getting himself and Fitz back to safety. So he shrugged and got driving and now he slid out of the small car and gave Coulson a thin smile of greeting. "Your financiers are going to get dinged for a handful of towels I wrecked in a motel on the cheap side of Philadelphia."

Coulson arched an eyebrow at him, then nodded a silent greeting towards Fitz as he tunneled out of the passenger side with only a little bit of awkward fumbling. "That's a hell of a hello. Define 'wrecked.'"

"I set them on fire when I was done washing demon bits off of myself. It was honestly the best solution. Doesn't really come out with bleach, those gritty little nubbles." Loki shrugged and opened the door of the back seat to get his pile of notes, the bag containing the few remaining beers, and the laptop case.

"Okay," said Coulson, his face going professionally blank while he absorbed _that_ tidbit. His eyes went to Fitz to see that, no, Loki wasn't exaggerating or joking. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the briefing room nearby. "Doctor Strange is onsite, just beat you here with some sort of creepy magic timing. Don't worry about stowing your stuff yet, we're going to go straight into a bull session. Definitely don't leave out the bit with the demon when you write your report."

"Oh, good," said Loki with as much cheer as he could bother to muster. "Well, I suppose that works out better than using Skype. I can get a good look at his face with the news I bring to the table. It's something, I suppose." He slammed the door of the car shut with a little more extra force than necessary, making it rock on its wheels. He looked up at the Director one more time before moving to the stairs and saw another warning – the presence of Strange was probably not the only annoying news about to greet him. There was a remarkably strong temptation to bring the remaining beer into the briefing.

. . .

Doctor Strange didn't look up when Coulson, Loki, and Fitz wandered into the room. He shifted in the chair he'd commandeered, his long, gloved fingers steepling against each other as people took their places in those ways that suited them best. Coulson at the head of the meeting table, Loki leaning against a far wall to presumably tower over the proceedings, and Fitz, looking as if he felt a little out of place, taking a chair near to the demigod. The door to the small briefing room stayed open; at least one SHIELD trainee poking their head in to take a startled glance around and then leaving again in an apologetic rush at the sight of their boss.

The sorcerer supreme tapped his fingers together. "I must admit to finding a certain amount of humility in recent events." His grey-blue eyes filtered up to regard each of the SHIELD agents in turn, ending with Loki. "You were right. Something _was_ missed on our end."

Loki didn't twitch a muscle at the surprise admission to him, save to glance warily at Coulson. The Director shrugged back. The exchange wasn't lost on Strange, who sighed. "My assistant and I assumed yet another assessment of our home after your update. Top to bottom, every spectrum of every possible art analyzed. And to my assistant's abject horror, he'd previously been right on top of one of the answers we sought and never knew. We found a trace of something underneath the case that once held the Promethium Key. A smudge of earth that had been scraped by a nail. My assistant's, of course." He looked rueful. "An honest mistake, and one he must be forgiven for. The trace was negligible. He never realized what he'd found."

Loki waved it off, thinking ruefully of Fitz's earnest reminder. _Sometimes things get missed._ "And the source of that material?" He didn't bother to sound like he was waiting to be surprised.

"It goes to prove that the true mistake here was mine. In my rigid belief that it could not be possible, I ignored the simplest explanation. The earth we found originates from the 'limbo' dimension that was once the key's home, naturally. Less than a fingernail's breadth of red sand pressed into the wood of my case." The thin features twisted, contorting the dark goatee into a brief sneer meant for some invisible opponent. "Belasco. He had a traveler's gifts. If he survived-"

"He did. I have heard his name spoken by a cult forged – I presume - under his hand." Loki smiled faintly at the microexpression of frustration that whispered across the man's face.

"-Then he might have had a way straight to the key. Connected to it, two lost relics of a dead world. Such things have ways of finding each other. The false portal was left to cause us to waste time with its riddles. And so, we've another sorcerer on the loose, one seemingly without cause or king..." Strange trailed off, his lips pursing.

The demigod arched his eyebrow, not particularly mollified by the doctor's lip service to humility. "Without cause? I'm afraid I must intervene. This 'Belasco' has a _most specific_ cause, and you and I aren't the only ones who've seen its trail. You missed more than one hint, Strange, and now that's been placed at my feet instead as well." His tone earned him a look from Coulson, whose lone good hand laid flat on the table in front of him in a silent warning.

It got him a sharp stare from Strange, as well. "He cannot be so mad as to resume his old plans! Further, I did not intend-"

Loki cut him off. "I know _quite well_ what you intended, Strange, and in your insistence to focus your concerns on _my_ place in the eternal balance, you neglected not only the evidence in your home but the words of those few who _might_ have been your ally." He kept going as the sorcerer began to pull himself to his feet, the aquiline face lined in anger. He leveled his own voice back down, attempting to maintain control of the emotions rising in the room. He didn't look at Coulson; if he had not bothered to intervene openly yet then he would simply have to trust to Loki's admittedly irritable judgment. "Drumm, Strange. Your old contemporary, the master of his family's _loa_. He came to you with a vital clue, a warning. If you'd just taken the time to _look._ "

The change in the sorcerer supreme's face was immediate and telling. The man looked struck, lowering himself back into his seat without a word. A gloved hand went to his forehead, a single finger pressing at the place between his brows as if a third eye had betrayed him. "His missing. I thought it a small matter when I had so many more pressing duties, though I tried to not simply brush him away. You found them?"

There was nothing to read in Strange's tone. It was a dead, inert question. Loki decided he preferred that. "First they found us – myself and Fitz here. And then I went to find them, discovering that their patron's chosen to give them some fairly horrible gifts for their use." He smiled down at the human's black hair, no mirth on his lips. "The door is preparing to open, apparently. They wish to bring through some entity I do not know of. What is Shuma-Gorath?"

Stephen Strange jerked in his seat, the lean face coming up again in plain horror.

. . .

 _This is not what the sorcerer tells them, but it is what must be understood._

 _This is Shuma-Gorath:_

 _In the nothing between the realities are Its endless tentacles, filling_ _all the little places it can reach with madness and despair. It is everything and nothing, Its mind forever full of screams and desire. It is the God of Contagion; to share Its vision is to warp your own into a sympathetic mirror reflecting only Its one staring, awful eye that glares into the depths of eternity – your madness, Its hunger. It is the slithering echo of a dying breath, It is the shadow that follows behind the light of day. It exists in superposition, Its greater morphic self forming the cold, invisible web between countless universes, Its physical incarnation squirming and loathsome to behold with its tentacles and lone squirming eye and its iris made up of all the colors of pain._

 _Shuma-Gorath sees through that one eye alone in both its incarnations, for that is all It needed to behold the forever night. There It sees the end of that era; It sees the hem of Death's own robe drawn like a veil over Its fate._

 _And Shuma-Gorath HATES that endless incarnation; hates Her on her throne above the ultimate nexus of all things. Shuma-Gorath has scratched at the door of Death Herself as a would-be conquerer and been sent away mewling before. Shuma-Gorath believes in slow revenge, and the patience of a long knife stowed well away in blackened minds throughout the ages. Throughout universes._

 _In every level of the multiverse that It has squirmed Its way through, It has become an infection in the balance, striving to rewrite the rules anew and proclaiming the multiverse itself to be the cause. In the ultimate heresy against nature, It does not seek the eternal nothing – It seeks eternal life to shape into worship. The cancer of the universe made flesh, for It to bind and hold fast._

 _Shuma-Gorath is bound only by rules and doors; It must be ASKED to come into the light. It must be brought through, like a welcomed guest. On the other side of one scarred, blood-black door, It hears the sibilant whisper of the mad mage – Belasco. Belasco has the Key to this door between them, a matter that took a decade to plan and still nearly fell apart countless times. Sweet Belasco, who sacrificed himself and the last light of his limbo kingdom to that eternal night for an earlier and failed chance to free Shuma-Gorath from the places between, where it is always cold and the only sound is an unceasing wail. Sweet Belasco, who screamed beautifully for decades until he landed in a pile of his own bones, kept screaming until he reformed. Oh Belasco, child of rage._

 _Shuma-Gorath is not capable of love. It could crave – and It craved something broken in the old sorcerer. It gave him dreams to goad him, gave him gifts so that he could find his way to what they both needed._

 _Shuma-Gorath lives in the darkest part of the universes, and in between the ticking seconds of terror granted by sleep hypnosis. It is the cold spot in the Eridanus sector that lurks beyond mankind's eyes, where realities press together as thinly as Its own outer membrane of skin. It is the void zone millions of miles away from the Milky Way. And It hears Its cultists screaming Its name at night, in their barrows and chapterhouses, waiting for the day It boils Its horrible flesh through the door that separates them. It will come, and these lost will thank It when they fall to their knees before It, swept into Its tentacles and then consumed by Its anathema grace._

 _Shuma-Gorath is not alone. There are worse yet than It filling the hollow between the all the worlds of the dreaming and the real – but It is the one that knocks at the door._

 _. . ._

In the ticking silence between Strange's words, Loki thought of this maddened Belasco and something cold wormed its way through his bones.

 _That could have been me._

 _In another place and time, it may have been_ meant _to be me._

He flexed his clenched fist, hidden under one arm. He let no one else see.

 _. . ._

"Did I miss the boring bit? Mystic backstories and whatever. Snore." Tony Stark jammed his head through the doorway of the briefing room, a bag of shelled pistachios crinkling in his hand. His abrupt half-entrance startled a tense Fitz into jumping upright next to Loki, the clatter of his chair breaking the rest of the silence that had fallen over the trio of men as Strange finished explaining a fraction of the mythology behind an endlessly powerful eldritch God. His head pulled back into the hall, asking someone else basically the same question. Coulson looked up when he heard Skye mumbling back and forth with the Avenger. "Oh, cool," came the muffled final response. Then he strode back in, followed by a young woman who looked like she'd just faced a whirlwind of her own.

Skye got some of her wind back when Stark dropped lazily into another chair next to the doctor. "Awesome, we can finally start the natty goatee club. I'll call Mack down, it'll be a trio. Phil, we're gonna need to paste some mirror universe facial hair on you." She smirked when Tony Stark snapped his fingers at her in what was probably some form of approval.

Loki, for his part, stared first at Stark and then at Coulson. His arm lifted slightly to gesture vaguely at the new arrival, his face holding the much clearer message of _are you being serious with me right now?_

He got a pained smile in response, but before Phil could say anything Stark cut in through a mouthful of snacky bits. "Shocks all around lately. Phil's alive, won't tell me how, never called, never wrote. We've been talking _that_ out. Well, I keep talking _at_ him while he walks away all busy and awkward looking with his one hand. Won't talk about that either. Hi again, Phil!" He waggled his fingers at the Director, followed by a wide, insincere grin.

"He let himself in. Stark, would you believe I'm a life model decoy? Just waiting on the spare parts kit." The pained expression seemed etched on Coulson's face.

"Suuuuuuure. First you tried the Holodeck excuse. I'd almost buy 'clone,' since I'm still figuring out how I saw two of that Koenig guy upstairs. Usually I'm good at spotting twins. Don't ask why. It's tacky." Stark coughed around an inhaled husk of a nut, reaching out for the pitcher on the desk. "Is this water? It's water." He glanced up at Loki. "Okay, not your theological gig, but can you do that transformation thingie? Water into Absolut? Be a pal?"

His response was a blunt, vaguely aghast stare from several faces around the room. Curiously, it was Strange that looked the most stunned by the flippant request.

"It _is_ kinda heretical to ask." Stark shrugged it off and settled for the water. "Sooooo, Fitz? Your name's Fitz, right?" He glanced up at the young man, still fidgeting next to Loki. Fitz managed a nod. "We gotta rig that scan expansion. Figured I'd step in and help, get that up and running within a day or so. Stark controls systems are currently operating more than half the airport luggage scanners across the country, and a bunch across the world. I got the hook-up." He set down the pitcher and tapped at his wrist where he wasn't actually wearing a watch. "Tick tock, we've got a timetable apparently. _Nice_ job reworking what I did. Really smooth. You want a job with Stark Industries? We pay better."

The words started as a half-strangled jumble of surprise. "I-I-I like my job. My friends are here."

Tony glanced quickly up at him. "You know who you're standing next to while you're saying that, right?"

"...My friends are here." It came out much firmer this time, followed by arms crossed steadily across himself. He didn't look up to see the blank expression that crawled across Loki's face and then stayed there to burrow into a creasing brow.

 _"_ _Wow."_ Tony blinked rapidly at Coulson. He pointed his bag of snacks at the young scientist. "That is some genuine A-list loyalty, Phil."

"It's the dental plan," deadpanned the Director. "Skye, Fitz, can you work with Stark on that?"

"Yeah," Skye said, while Fitz nodded. She pointed a tablet stylus at Loki, who seemed mostly mentally elsewhere. "While you're here, I finished combing that forum six different ways. I can map out a bunch of their little regional headquarters and whatnot, but the big thing? There's not a word about Drumm _or_ you. For certain. So I dunno how they got a jump on you."

"The scanner," blurted Fitz. His eyes went wide with realization, looking up at Loki's still-blank expression. "The- all it ever picked up was us, right? And they sniffed you out at the meeting, and they walked right up to our hotel? So... okay, maybe its stronger than we know on some level."

Loki seemed to rejoin reality, blinking once. "They smelled promethium on us, you mean."

"Beats Axe body spra-"

"Not everything is a damned joke, Stark!" The room went dead silent at the demigod's abrupt snarl. He held up a hand to indicate his own silence, inclining his head towards Coulson in a private apology. "I'll arrange a written report on what's been done thus far." In an attempt to cut some of the tension he'd made, he glanced down at Fitz. His voice was wry. "I'll be certain to use a tablet, to avoid any further incidents." It got him a faltering smile as he excused himself.

"Ooooookay," said Stark, looking around the room and catching the eye of the quiet sorcerer still remaining. He didn't look particularly ruffled. "Maybe I should have stuck around for the backstory bit. Kinda missed the tone of the group there."

Strange did nothing but arch an eyebrow in a knowing, unhappy response.


	13. Reading the Tea Leaves

13\. Reading the Tea Leaves

. . .

The paper bag settled gently onto the thin desk next to the laptop and tablet Loki was working with. He closed both on the Director's sudden approach. "You forgot your beers down in the garage bay." Coulson untangled the bag's flimsy paper handles from his fingers, trying to not unbalance the bottle still crooked in his elbow. "That's probably not going to be enough, so I brought a sidekick. Shotglasses are in the bag."

Loki snaked out the bottle of whiskey before it could roll down the director's arm and drop to the floor. He didn't look up. "I didn't forget. You know, there's also Asgardian smiths that have a rather solid variety of limb replacement options. I'm quite sure Thor could arrange something, as I'm assuming everyone would be a touch wary of my referral."

Phil's now free hand waved it off. "I'll decide eventually. It's nice to _have_ options, because between you and me? Getting pants on in the morning with one hand is a freakin' bear."

"I did not need to know this," replied Loki in an even, conversational voice, fishing the glasses out of the bottom of the crumpling cardboard six-pack. He pulled out one of the beers next, wrenching off its cap easily and putting it in front of the director as the human all but fell into the seat near him in the tiny office. "But I appreciate the possibly misguided trust. If not the visual, particularly."

Phil grunted by way of response, fumbling the beer up for a long chug.

"You know..." Another bottle slid out of the bag as Loki kept the same tone of voice. "You _could_ have handled your brief death and misadventure differently. Simply told these lot of Avengers earlier – though the irony of _me_ telling you there's value in coming clean is not at all lost, I assure you. In any case, then you wouldn't be hiding down here with me hoping that Stark will give up and leave. I assume he's currently hovering around your office like a chattering, heavily caffeinated parrot instead of annoying Fitz in the lab. Like he should be doing."

This was responded to with a grumpy half-shrug and another large mouthful of beer. "They banded together over that death, Loki. Gave 'em a reason for vengeance. I didn't want to undermine that by popping out like a stripper in a cake."

A black eyebrow arched sharply as Loki reared back, mock-insulted. "...I thought they banded together to kick my arse?"

"That, too." Phil snorted. "God, what a frigging year." He gestured at the demigod with his beer. "Speaking of annual events, is this really what's going to happen? Another round of horrible eldritch things showing up on our planet like we owe 'em money? _Do_ we owe them money?" He shook his head and kept swigging. "I'll write a check. I'll write _all_ the checks. I'm so done with tentacly things."

"For what it's worth, it sounds like it's only the one monstrous be-tentacled horror this time." He managed to offer up that familiar, thin smile with a trace of dour humor in it. "Just one worse than all those roiling Chthonic abominations put together. But, hey, no soul-hijacking magical books this time."

Phil's frown was a grudging one. "It's something, I guess."

"Indeed." Loki reached out to resume fiddling with his tablet, opening the laptop back up and setting down his drink to stare at a number of tabbed documents.

Phil didn't miss the quick attempt to keep him from looking at either screen; didn't miss that the usually verbosely literate demigod had managed a grand total of three sentences of 'official mid-situation report' in the hour since leaving the briefing abruptly. "You okay? You're off balance, got tense in there. Haven't seen you pop off at anybody like that in a while. Least, not out of the clear blue." He shrugged a little. "Course, Tony Stark does have that effect on people at the best of times."

A pale hand reached out to grab the already half-empty beer again. "I'm fine." He must have been able to sense Phil's not particularly convinced look, but the refusal to look over again was telling. "It's nothing."

"Whenever you say 'it's nothing,' I tend to get a little nervous." Phil frowned at him. Really, he'd been the tiniest bit off since... "Did something happen in Asgard?"

The laptop was slapped shut again. Loki put the beer down to rub hard at his forehead with two long fingers. "No."

"Okay, you lying to me or to yourself? Because..." Coulson's voice trailed off. He'd gotten a decent handle on how the demigod would typically react in various situations over the last year and would have bet real money he would have gotten cut off before finishing a sentence that he didn't actually have an ending for. Instead, the pale figure continued to sit there, rubbing at his forehead with deliberate slowness. "Yep. You're off balance."

"Why is it that any variation of ' _I don't want to talk about it_ ' inevitably invites more prying and poking from you?" Loki sounded tired.

"Well, you didn't say-"

"It was implied." He lifted his head up to look at Coulson, his face as weary as his voice. "It's a private matter, that's all. I've a lot on my mind. Questions I didn't know I had came up." He gestured at the laptop. "These tasks I insult as 'meager' help. Is that enough?"

"What set you off in there?"

Loki half-rolled his eyes and slammed slightly back in his chair, his gaze fixating on something in the high corner of the room. "Stark is a high-functioning child. He could irritate an anchorite into profanity. And between him and Strange's cautious near-hostility – the most grudging apology e'er seen right there... You know, as much as I'm aware of all the reasons _why_ I invite such a response, I can and do grow tired of it." The next was muttered mostly under his breath as he tugged at the laptop again. "I expect that's much of why I stay."

Coulson blinked, putting it together in a flash of comprehension. It wasn't really the usual routine of half-trusting him. It was what Fitz had said. Whether the young scientist had intended to do it or not, he'd casually stuck up for Loki in front of not only an Avenger, but one of that group's most public and powerful faces _._ Well, _maybe_ Stark had the lead position if... _Nah. I'm still a Captain America guy._

He mentally shrugged that tangent off and kept thinking about Fitz's statement. That had to be a little new. Even Romanoff's hostility was something everyone let slide or just danced around, as May had, until the 'black widow' came to some sort of truce on her terms. But Stark got returned fire, an open and full defense of the Asgardian's presence by someone other than the Director. And with what he knew of Loki – the dude was probably thrown off guard by that something fierce. It was one thing to gamely accept his place among humans in a kind of companionable peace. It was another to watch anyone besides Coulson outright call him a friend. Honestly, he'd had a bet with himself that it would have been Skye to make that jump first. He absorbed that to consider further later, then reached out and tried to fight with the cap on the whiskey bottle, struggling to thumb it loose. "You could help," he said out the side of his mouth.

"Didn't need it." To prove Loki's observation right, the cap clattered to the desk a second later.

. . .

Coulson finally left him alone after an hour of steadily working their way through the whiskey bottle together, after which point, Phil calculated a bit too loudly to the bemused and much more sober demigod, Stark might have finally given up and gone to do some work. Or, there would be one _hell_ of a loud conversation that Skye would probably broadcast through the whole facility for everyone to enjoy.

Coulson's tipsily brave voice indicated he really didn't care which outcome won out. Privately, Loki hoped for drama and assumed he'd be disappointed. Stark was an eminently asinine creature, but he also had a job to do. For all the man's flaws, he didn't leave such matters half-done. Further, it was an opportunity to show off his resources. Loki listened for a while to the distant chatter of the in-facility comms regardless, picturing all the delightful ways a raucous showdown could go down, but alas. As expected, it was not to be.

He shrugged off this minor disappointment and eventually shut off the laptop for a while, taking it down the narrow corridors to store the device in his own private quarters. The hour was drawing late, which meant the rec area might be quiet. Preferable, in his current state of mind. His continuing weariness was not physical. Slow hours could still weigh heavily on his thoughts. This night was set to be another one of those. The last had been that crate in South America, there ferrying information quietly between factions that could not be seen to interact with each other. Clever enough work, if a minor task.

A cup of tea or some other comfortable snack would be an acceptable distraction, he decided. Before leaving his rooms, he paused by a low set of shelves that held a selection of various books he was currently reading and other oddities beside. He picked up one of these to toy with a moment, smiling down at it in a way that belied his hidden feelings. A small wooden horse with far too many legs, the carving imperfect in places that did not detract from the overall sincerity of the attempt. A simple gift from a father to a child, from a time where there was no reason to question the greater details surrounding their relationship. Now there was nothing but questions. A new peace between them, true, but still. Questions.

Without Odin's name, who was _he_? And with that, the harder question was always close behind.

 _Where do I belong?_

He never felt like he had an answer – since that hour he touched the Casket and found his first unwanted, privately apocalyptic question writ large in his own soul, there were never full answers. Only more questions, and a need to run in some direction or another, seeking something he couldn't quite catch sight of.

He put the toy horse down on the shelf again, thinking of the homeless on the streets, the easy prey for Shuma-Gorath's feeder cult. Their hungry eyes, looking for something to make them feel less lost.

For as much as Loki knew the value of appearances; the worth of every line of an illusion meant for tactical use or mere joke, he'd long since come to not like looking in mirrors. The glimpse of his own reflection was meant for quick encounters, not idle introspection. Not when he knew what was seen was not the entire truth. There was the drifting suspicion that something in his own eyes might be rather similar to those he'd seen lost on the streets, and he did not care to find the pity such looks could draw from others.

Not Asgard and certainly not Jotunheim; neither place held a home for him as things stood. Acceptance, at best, but he couldn't help but want more than that. For now, he accepted a place on Earth, and that with curious companionship with humans and their too-brief lives. But that could not be a home forever, and just for that reason. A few years, a few decades, and all would be unrecognizable once more. He did not want to be here for that. He did not want to watch these humans-

 _friends_

He closed his eyes at the intrusion of the unexpected sound, spoken in his mind in a soft brogue, still not a word he could easily welcome. He did not want to see them gone in quick, relentless time.

The loneliness, that emotion he yet fought to ignore, began to loom and fill the corners of his quiet room. So he did what he could do best – he shoved these thoughts away and made his way down to the rec, away from the old ghosts that haunted close behind him.

. . .

"The kettle is already out. In the sink. I made a cup earlier."

Loki paused at the low, stentorian voice that came from a dark corner of the rec area. Strange's voice, he recognized. Perhaps not too surprising; he'd voiced some intent to stay on site until the matter of where the Key might have gone had made another jump in its progress. Loki closed the cabinet door with the box of some halfway-decent green tea in his other hand, narrowing his eyes at the dark shape. No, the man wasn't trying to skulk up on him. The mage was simply sitting quietly in the dark. Not unlike how he might, he realized wryly. "I feel I should apologize for the quality available," he said, shaking the tea to emphasize. "No one here has the patience for a decent loose leaf."

"I knew it was going to be risky pickings when I noticed the knock-off Keurig received vastly more use than the manual slow-drip pot. A calculated observation."

Loki snorted. "Finally, something we can agree on without reservations."

"While looking like the utterly highbrow snots everyone thinks we are," came the sigh.

"Speak for yourself." He filled the kettle with water from the tap, unceremoniously dropping it on the range top to boil. "I've come to accept truck stops and throttled wi-fi access as my new lot in life." He grinned, the effect ironically unhappy. "I ate my first Twinkie last month. It was terrible."

"We could play 'whose existence is worse'."

Loki rummaged around another cabinet, looking for a pair of clean mugs. Always a difficult chore. He finally came up with one printed with an absurd hand-painted I _heart_ SHIELD logo covering it and another with an astoundingly grouchy looking feline on one side. "I'd win, if we're submitting lifetime achievements. I've got a thousand years on you, Strange, not counting whatever sorcerous time-nonsense you've gotten up to. Don't duel a millennial when it comes to the dire timeline of history. " He studied the animal's expression, slightly disturbed by the ire implicit in the cat's eyes. "If I'm making you a cup as well, you're taking this mug."

"Won't trouble me. He thinks I haven't noticed, but my assistant keeps a small dishtowel with that exact cat on it. Thinks it's funny." Strange hoisted himself up from the corner chair, approaching the kitchenette proper to study Loki's tea-making method. "You don't simply set the water to boiling with a touch?"

"Call me a silly traditionalist." Two tea bags, each to a mug. "You want to argue, you can make your own."

The sorcerer's voice was slightly hangdog, to Loki's dour amusement. "Forget arguing tonight. I've already spent an apologetic hour on the phone with Drumm and I doubt I'm done groveling. He's got leverage on me over this for ages, and further he did nothing but speak well of you. Still not convinced you're who you say you are, however."

"I have _fans._ How very bizarre." His droll tone let nothing else slip. "Is that what's got you so morose?"

Strange pursed his lips. "Beyond all the sundry mistakes you found yourself cleaning up after on my behalf? I whiffed a plain language warning from the Vishanti that would have avoided the whole damn thing, if I'd not gotten my nose set just so."

"That Agamotto?" He got a look from Strange. "Drumm outlined the Vishanti to me. Was rather helpful; all I knew of them was a moment of distant kindness when I sealed the Darkhold."

"Your name is still written in that black book, you do realize. It does not forget. It cannot forget." Strange leaned against the side of the stove, well away from the active burner.

"To know that, I expect my name is also writ in the tome yet under your care." His voice was mild. "The end of that journey isn't known. I'm in the grey. I'll take it, over the alternatives. Take your eye off me, Strange, I'm not your damn enemy. Not while I'm on this road. You ought to have realized that the day I walked into your house."

"I should have. Instead I spent hours fretting over the imbalance I knew was there, looking for it in your path and missing the encroachment of Shuma Itself. And Belasco. No, not all falls are fatal. Some are worse than that." Strange watched the steam began to filter out of the kettle. "Take that as warning of your own, Loki. If this plan finds the trail of the Key tomorrow, don't try to settle all my matters by yourself." He looked up to meet the demigod's eyes, watching him warily. "You intend to try. It's plain – risk not your friends, and you've enough confidence to believe you might overpower my mistakes. Another thing we hold in common. That arrogance, that faith in our own abilities. Do _not_ face Shuma-Gorath and Its minions by yourself. It will consume you."

 _Friends._ That word again. Instead of answering Strange's earnest warning, Loki dug around inside the comfortable jacket he'd switched into earlier and came up with the Project HOME pamphlet he'd kept to consider. He thrust it towards Strange. "Expiate yourself and give them a donation on my behalf," he drawled, sparing a thought for the steadfast volunteer nurse. "You've got the money by bucketfuls."

Strange plucked it from his hand, looking it over. "Why not you?"

"Well, firstly, thus far I've done all your heavy lifting. Call it a matter of debts to settle. Secondly, on _my_ paycheck?" Loki arched an eyebrow as he took the kettle off the burner. Just shy of boiling. Perfect.

 _"_ _Do_ they pay you?"

"I suppose they might do. I've actually never paid attention." He shrugged, opening the tea cabinet again. "Honey or sugar? Scratch that, they're out. Sugar substitute." He grinned wolfishly to himself when he caught the motion of Stephen Strange shuddering on the other side of the stove. "Honey it is," he said cheerily to the mug with the grumpy cat on it. Horrible thing, tacky as all Hel. It looked magnificently out of place in Strange's gloved hand once the tea finished steeping. It was the little joys that kept him sane.

The tea was ultimately acceptable. The grudging silence that followed after the other sorcerer was better, and in time he went back to his privacy in a lighter state of mind.


	14. The Management Seminar

14\. The Management Seminar

. . .

The stylus flicked artfully in Stark's hand, illuminating the trail on the large digital display for the gathering to see. Stark himself had his feet up on a desk and a bowl of cheeze-its nestled on his belly while he talked through a mouthful of crackers. "Your doohickey left JFK and didn't pony up for a decent non-stop, tells you a few things right there. Mostly that your thief was a cheapskate. Anyway. Seems to have picked up a connection in the Ukraine – that's the Kiev Boryspil airport there... and then the particle trail comes through Heathrow a little later on." The trail lit up into a single large dot.

With a flick of his wrist, the map pulled in on the United Kingdom to show the soft gleam of the scanner feed. "Off the grid from there, but probably your best bet. Merry olde England. Swingin' London. The game's afoot, and so forth." The stylus clattered to the desk, Stark's interest fading for a moment in favor of food. Doctor Strange stared at the back of his head with a pinched expression.

Fitz, who had been nodding along with the rundown, stepped forward to take over. "Right, right. Without any access to a further scan of the area, can't tell you where the Key might be from there. Hasn't gone through another airport yet, unless they took a small flight out of the countryside. It's something. It's a start." He cleared his throat. "We can't pin timing down very well, unfortunately. There's a sort of... variable half-life to the particle trail, so we can tell the probable order in which things happen based on a degradation between the tracking points, but not when these flights occurred."

Loki gave a half shrug from where he leaned against the wall. "I doubt they dithered about in New York for coffee after the theft. Safe to conclude their departure was within hours or perhaps a day of the crime, depending on the closure of any final matters there." He looked to Coulson, who arched an eyebrow to tell him to continue. "Seems to me there was probably a meeting with some conspirator from the cult. We know from Skye's search there is indeed a small chapterhouse in the city. I'd suspect one of their 'guides' deployed the device on Strange's wall while Belasco arranged his own, more ethereal entry."

Coulson nodded, agreeing with that conclusion. He didn't nod very hard. For _some reason_ that the demigod was personally quite certain of, there was a tell-tale crease between the human's eyes. A good old-fashioned hangover headache.

"Region list I pulled says they've definitely got at least one place out there; couple more up in Scotland out by Edinburgh. Found a lot of chatter around St. Mungo, though, for London. Anyway, that leaves us with the side question of 'who bought the crappy non-functioning portal starter kit' off the internet. Like, a lot of data is out there, but it wasn't on Wikileaks either. Someone sold our intel. Someone else bought it." Skye gestured at the screen. "Has Belasco been around, playing the ponies and building a little cache of money before this?"

"Belasco, in his madness, was ever meticulous and patient both." Strange interlaced his fingers. "Your irreverence aside, he was almost certainly up to something of that nature for a while. Preparing for this attack on my home, preparing for his master's call."

"How long ago was Belasco's fall?" asked Loki. "You indicated it was your predecessors who had a hand in that."

"Before you were born, Loki of Asgard. Possibly before your father's father was birthed. Civilizations have risen and died in the ages since Belasco's insane wars tore apart his world."

"So he's had a _little_ time," deadpanned Loki. The crack earned him a cheeze-it thrown his way, which he caught handily and threw back. Harder. Coulson couldn't help a smirk as Loki calmly folded his arms again while Stark picked the cracking snack out of his t-shirt.

Strange ignored the tiny conflict, leaning back in his seat. His voice was sardonic. "I'm sure we could knock off a couple of centuries for material reconstitution and general sulking."

"Okay, I can see we're already entering the pointless banter and early morning crankiness phase of the briefing. Let me stop it right there." Coulson stepped forward to take command of the room. "Loki, I assume you're planning on picking up the trail in London."

"Fair assumption."

Fitz opened his mouth and then closed it again, drawing a nod from Coulson. Forming a fast guess about what was to be said next, Loki lifted a single finger in the start of an objection from where his hand lay on his bicep, not able to get a word in edgewise before Coulson continued. "Fitz is staying on the job with you. We don't know the scene over there, so nobody rolls alone from here on out."

"All the more reason to keep a low profile and to ensure fewer risks to our personnel." His attempt to be a conservative voice of reason got him a hard look from Strange. He smiled blandly back.

Coulson's face said he wasn't buying it. "Yeah, I listened to the same run-down you did. Last time you and I dealt with cataclysmically awful crap that snacked on reality like it was a granola bar, it wasn't a one person job. It wasn't a _two-person_ job, but there we were. I'd rather not drill it down like that again." He quirked an eyebrow. "Which is why a: Stark is going to be monitoring any changes in the London situation with us-"

" _Hey!"_ Stark pushed forward in his seat, staring at Phil.

"He's got the gear in case something has to go hot. We live-fire tested that last year. And b: Strange is getting cut in on the party line. Same reason. He's got the toolkit to shut this down before it gets out of hand. You're gonna go out there and scout. I'm not going to get in front of that. But the moment something changes, this turns into a team effort. Fitz watches your back on this and monitors communication. Same as how we got here." He braced himself, waiting for the inevitable explosion of egos all over the room.

" _I'm on vacat_ -"

Loki's voice overlapped Stark's affronted shout. "I'm more than capable of-"

"You'll bloody well get yourself kille-" Fitz, utterly unafraid of the demigod, stuck a finger in the pale face as he interrupted him.

"I _warned you_ last night of the dangers of taking this on al-" Strange had to shout to get over the start of the cacophony, leaning forward as Stark whirled in his seat to stare at Coulson.

"Wait, live-fire te- _PHIL YOU COULD HAVE TOLD ME LAST YE-"_

"I am trying to keep _you_ out of further dang-" Loki barely swatted at the pointing hand of the human.

"I don't need y-"

Skye slammed both her still-bruised hands on a desk with only a slight wince. A soft rumble jolted the room just enough to cut off every snappish voice in surprise. They stared at her instead. "Oh my God, an entire room of twelve year old boys. Stop arguing!" She pointed at Stark. "If you gave that much of a crap about being left alone on your post-robot massacre 'staycation' or whatever, you never would have started poking around after Loki left. Instead, _you_ came and hassled _us._ You're bored. You're like one of those dogs that if they don't have something to do, you start taking apart the porch. Chip in or shut it." Stark opened his mouth to try and respond. She jutted her face at him in her best _try it_ expression. When he didn't, she swiveled to target the demigod. "Loki."

Dead silence.

"You are a complete ass sometimes and you know it. I just heard what Strange said to you. You're not protecting anybody if you tear off alone on this. You will get hurt. Yeah, even you, all near-godly and full of ego. We all saw what happened last year, and this Shuma-thingie is capable of being way worse? We're supposed to be a team. We all know the score when things go big. Deal with it and try not being a drama queen for like five minutes. We're tired of losing people. Fitz is going with you, end of discussion. Fitz?"

"Y-yeah?" He braced for his turn on the wheel.

"Stay funky. Don't look too long at anything weird. Keep your phone charged. Whatever tall, skinny, and angsty might say about it, I know I'd rather hear about six false alarms than miss the moment you need backup. And you're gonna need backup, the way things go around here." She looked down. "Strange? You don't get to pull the high and mighty bit in here without getting the crap needled out of you, even if you're right on that one. Relax and help us out. We all whiff one now and again. It's cool. We got this." Skye reached out and took the bowl of snacks off Stark's chest, eating a handful. Then she carried the bowl out of the room and away from the group with a still-annoyed _ugh._

Loki stared at Coulson, who was silently beaming with pride. "I still think-"

"Can it."

He did.

. . .

Fitz showed up at the open door to Loki's quarters just in time to see him shoving a thin jacket into a travel bag hard enough to make the straps of it make a squeaky noise. He could tell by the slight pause that Loki knew he was there. He didn't turn around to look. Fitz cleared his throat to alert him anyway. "Going to yell at me again?"

"I am not, no." It came with a weary sigh. "Is there any point to suggesting you volunteer yourself out of this?"

"Not particularly. I'm coming with you, like it or not." He looked up at the top of the doorjamb, reaching up to poke awkwardly at it with a finger. "If for no other reason than I don't want to get dressed down again by Skye, of all people, either."

Things kept getting shoved around inside the bag. "You know, I let you come along for your own peace of mind, a moment of mercy on my part. I did not intend it to be an invitation to follow along to the front porch of some unspeakable evil."

"This just sort of naturally happens wherever you go with some fair regularity."

A pale hand came up to point vaguely at the ceiling. "I've been curious. When did everyone collectively decide it was acceptable to backtalk the slightly unstable alien every chance they could get?"

" _Slightly?"_

Loki turned around to look at the young man with outright disbelief, noting the cheeky grin. He sat down on the couch next to his bag, looking more than a bit defeated. "Keep your planet. You're all mad. I'll put it in writing, even. _Earth declared invasion free, signed this day by Loki, marked as current address somewhere wherever."_ He looked away, still baffled. "What in the name of the All-Father happened to my life?"

"That one's too easy. Letting it go."

Loki didn't seem to hear him. "Every time I turn around, another of you creatures is missing, injured, or _dead._ Or in some other misfortunate straits, and you all will stand and volunteer for the risk of more. You yourself have been damaged more than enough. Your life nigh lost. And yet. And _yet_."

"What's the alternative? Give up and hide?" Fitz shrugged at him. "There's things we can do that make situations better for other people, even if they don't know it. Even if SHIELD is still kind of a bad word in a lot of areas, even if people believe the worst of us. So why give up? Why lose that? It's not always easy, no. But the thing about _this_ team is that we're also friends. Makes the fight more worth it, I think. Even when sometimes we fight each other."

"That word again." Loki made a soft, aggravated noise, clearly uncomfortable with this bend in the conversation's path. "And a friend at the risk of making enemies? Tch."

Fitz looked at him, puzzled. "What? Stark? Stark fights with _everyone_ , then gets over it five minutes later. If he holds grudges, though, they come up in the weirdest ways. He arranged the London flight for us, by the way."

"Oh, grand. Another cargo plane with cows?"

"First-class. His card. Didn't say anything about it otherwise, just did it. So that'll be a nice change." He grinned down at Loki's stunned stare. "We don't fight things alone around here. There's no need to. People _want_ to help. I mean, wasn't that what it was like growing up fighting alongside Thor and those warr-"

"They were _his_ friends." By the look on his face, it was clear the abrupt tone hadn't been intentional, and said far more than he intended.

Fitz crossed his arms. "Well. Now we're yours." He watched the pale face go blank again, no hint of any response coming to break the new silence. It didn't bother Fitz, he got it. Everyone had their way of coping. "I'll be waiting down in the bay. Coulson's going to see us off; he'll be monitoring the situation from here at least for now."

. . .

In the ticking silence of his room after Fitz left, all Loki could think of was Strange's warning. _Do not face Shuma-Gorath alone. It will consume you._

He looked up, not really seeing his quarters with the short stacks of books, one of which had a soft blue plush toy of a Disney alien propped up next to them. Not seeing the knick-knacks and oddities of a life that was slowly becoming some strange aesthetic blend of human and Asgardian. He saw possible fates instead. _Better me than these humans, Strange. Better I am at risk. What loss is there should_ I _fall? No more planets destroyed, regardless of my intentions. No more loose ends in me for Thanos to tie off. No Loki at the dawn of Ragnarok. Fate, broken one way or another._

The thoughts were at odds with something else inside him. Behind them was the curious, confusing realization that if he did manage to somehow get himself killed in this duty or some other matter to come, he would be grieved. Asgard's grief in the days after his first great fall he'd doubted, save for Frigga. Lost Frigga, who cared for him to the end in defiance of the All-Father's law.

But these fleeting humans, ones who once knew him only as an enemy. They might grieve him.

He did not know how to feel about that. So he resumed packing a few things for his trip instead, wondering still how lightly that word _friend_ could come to a human, when he found it so damnably heavy.


	15. In Neverland

15\. In Neverland

. . .

It was Belasco who fed them the prophecy, of course.

There were few places left for Death to go where she might not be found, he explained to those among the acolytes who had proven to be most patient and loyal. The incarnation hunted not only by some distant Mad Titan alone, but by the great and mighty Shuma-Gorath, who bore Her both a grudge and the mark of Her eternal hate. Yes, It had been chased away before to lick Its wounds.

 _In strange aeons, even Death might die,_ said Belasco, a mystery so old and so pure that it marked itself out a place amongst mythos, fiction, and religion. _And with her fallen, we will live eternal in Shuma-Gorath's embrace. But first to find the Door, scratched upon by black beasts who know not where they have trod. Then the Key, held prisoner by a slave to Order's bleating. And then the Offering, the incarnation trapped in some mortal form by her own hidden bargains._

The finer details were lost on most of the cultists, who simply stared into Belasco's burning black eyes from within the depths of his hood and saw the damned pits of their better future in them. He saw much more than that when he looked out across the supplicants. Belasco and his God could see what was, and what might yet be. The thin chains of past and probability, chased through the grey nexus. Through those, they found a subtle anomaly beginning to intertwine with the futures of the local galaxy. Death, stressed and weary by a hunt across time and space, was hiding the essence of herself. She was likely to go to ground on Earth next; for so many such arcane threads were passing and knotting through that young world – whispers of the infinite, the massing of armies, and the evolution of its dominant predatory species. There was power there.

Shuma-Gorath did not care about the desires of Thanos, and so, neither did Belasco. They fought for greater things on a grander scale, and would use what tools they could find to accomplish what they needed. A cult was a fine tool, but could be useful only if it could be controlled.

The orders Belasco gave his loyalists were much clearer than the prophecy.

 _Go forth. Watch and see. Look for her, in those places she might be._

. . .

The other nurses knew her only as a volunteer; a young woman that once fell on hard times and gave back by taking care of others in the depths of more than a few despairs. She gave her name as Shelley and little else mattered except that her background checked out and her training was passed with flying colors. The famous London children's hospital she worked for now didn't care that she used to be homeless. They cared that the kids and teens in the various wards _loved_ seeing the young woman. Shelley was full of wild stories, shelter folklore and ghost tales from the bad years. She knew about Bloody Mary and the Blue Lady, the twin angels (and sometimes demons) of the streets, and she always snuck in treats for them.

She would sit with them and sing, and now she began to add one little extra to her check-ups. Ears, nose, throat, vitals, and ensure all was in order for the doctors. The youngest ones especially benefited from a routine and a familiar face. But when she came close to the children's faces now, she also gently kept one thumb on their cheek to pull open a child's eye. Looking into the iris for any clue. Looking for a hint of the bargain Death Herself might strike with a dwindling mortal host, where She would burrow in and share the last days or weeks of life alongside some willing spirit desperate for a little more life.

Probably not the youngest; the most frail, embattled by leukemia or a host of other merciless ills. Many fought back against their fears with a smile, or angry tears, or were surrounded by their families. Most of them still knew hope. Shelley looked at the older ones first, especially the ones that pretended to not be afraid of what might happen in the colder antiseptic halls of the other wards, the places the children went if their illnesses began to turn on them more viciously.

There were others in the world like Shelley, watching over the sick and dying, always being kind. Others, once lost, now looking for the clues while under Belasco's command. But it was Shelley that found the girl and saw the bone-pale mote in her dark green eye. The mark. Just as she'd been taught.

She pulled her hand away from the girl she was checking in on – a young woman, perhaps fourteen or fifteen. Her family didn't come, not often. They couldn't afford to. The father ran a takeaway below their home in Hackney that specialized in cheap, fast pots of biryani; her mother took in dresses and did other spots of tailoring for a little cash, the needle moving quick in hands stained from years of beautiful henna decorating the backs of them. The girl had other siblings, none of whom were sick. They didn't come, either.

Salima, with the dark-gold eyes, Death's mote plain and deep in one iris, looked steadily back at the volunteer nurse. Salima, who didn't look afraid anymore. The girl who once told the nurses bravely that she didn't need anyone, she had her own faith.

Shelley smiled down into the light brown face of the sick girl. What was it she had? A bone disease of some sort, she thought. She hadn't read the clipboard yet to be sure. Pretending nothing was awry, Shelley reached out to pluck it up from where it hung. "You're looking perfectly lovely today, Salima. Excellent condition." She gave the girl a quick smile and checked the board. Damnable doctor's writing. She couldn't tell. She put the board back down and met the girl's eyes, her smile faltering at what she saw in them.

"I know," said Death, in Salima's quiet voice. The smooth lilt of a girl born in Mumbai and raised in northern London. A human voice, with something cold rattling deep inside it. She reached up and gently touched Shelley's brow with a thin brown hand. "I'm sorry. I can't let you do this." She looked away. "You're not here to help me. Go. Now. You mustn't tell _them._ "

Shelley frowned down at the girl. There was something she was supposed to remember to do, but her cheek felt numb so she reached up to touch it instead. Something in her face had gone slack. "S-"

"Go," whispered the girl. It was the only sound she could understand in the growing sea of confusion that swamped her mind. So Shelley left.

. . .

The other nurses knotted quickly around the figure, the woman who collapsed just outside the hospital. A crumpled form on a dirty sidewalk, everyday tragedy. They clamored for her attention. "What happened? Love, love, can you hear us? Bloody-"

Ironic echo, the hands of women tugging open her eye to peer and see what was wrong with the pretty young volunteer nurse who always made the children smile. Shelley mumbled nonsense at them, trying to flex her hands, trying to remember the face of a girl and something else that was deadly important. It was all falling away between her fingers, like ice water. Around her, the voices kept going. "Think she's had a stroke. And so young. Tam, go get a doctor. Quick!"

The bleeding in her brain marked her fate seconds later. Bleeding that started just underneath where a girl's slim hand touched her. There was no chance for recovery. No hope. Only death.

Belasco, tall and burning forever inside his mind, watched his servant die from the rooftops of a nearby building. Shuma-Gorath's whispers hinted that this one of the likeliest places for emergence based on ripples in the stream, and so he'd stayed close to see if that was true. Shelley was gone, but what she'd died for was beyond valuable. All he had to do was wait for the emergence of the Offering, now that she undoubtedly felt her enemies were gone. And then he'd take her _home._

Soon.

But first – the man that had killed one of their smallest pets. The false God, the changeling on a broken path. He was coming, too. The Key knew the mark of its dead limbo home, warned of the man's coming.

Belasco thought more than one sacrifice to his God's power might be a fine thing, indeed.

. . .

It wasn't the sort of first-class plane that had bedrooms and multi-course meals, but it had legroom, a modicum of privacy away from other passengers – save Fitz, who remained barely in view – and, most importantly, not a single damned cow on the entire flight. He'd nearly asked to be certain, but decided ultimately that a non-stop commercial flight from the States to London's Heathrow _probably_ was not selling tickets to Holstein heifers.

Instead it was eight hours of relative peace and quiet. At the edge of his senses, he could detect Fitz snoring softly in his own roomy seat. For Loki's part, it was a time to read. Strange, in a fit of diplomacy, had loaned him a handful of tomes on such monstrous lore as he'd encountered in his role as Sorcerer Supreme. Chief among these was a deceptively thin book intended to catalogue some of the grandest of dangers. The words inside were tiny and dense, written in a coded magician's language that he easily deciphered. The descriptions accompanied the odd sketch or other materials. He skimmed between the deities and horrors for the third time, glancing over the various details of Shuma-Gorath and revisiting the legacy of Chthon and his monstrous 'children' whose squirming forms he knew too well. The section on the ancient Fear Lords in general gave him some pause, no few of those finding some parallel in old Asgardian lore. And in the back, the dark pages telling tales of Mephisto, who was known also as Satanael, Typhon and the Serpent. Here among these tales was also written the name _Jormungand_ , and for a wonder this tome did not blindly assume that massive harbinger of Asgard's end was _his_ creation alone.

And the final page, where only the single word was written in that script all sorcerers knew: _Death._

For Her, all else was mystery.

With a sigh he shut the book, using Strange's note as a bookmark. Again the scrawled words implored him – _Do not face this alone. If we've missed so much on the way to this point, then you cannot know what risks you now approach. Send a signal of any kind, and we will come._

He stared at the pale back of someone else's soft lounge, his instincts still rattled and he couldn't be certain why.

Across the aisle, Fitz shifted in his sleep. In the pocket of his fuzzy-necked spring jacket was a phone with about a half a dozen different emergency alerts ready to go. Loki's plan was more intangible – don't get caught out unawares. Well, at least Fitz's plan seemed to satisfy both Coulson and the other sorcerer, so, very well. He'd given what compromise he must.

The plane bumped softly in the air, a quick jolt of turbulence as their altitude began to change. Fitz shifted again, enough for Loki to tell he was awake. The words were mumbled over to him, muzzy and half-aware. "We landing?"

Loki glanced out the window, calculating. "Less than an hour, I think. The land's only just come into view."

"'Kay." And with that, the boy was out again. With a thin smile, Loki kept looking out the window at the way the light flickered against the ocean's surface to show a few inches worth of clear water. If he squinted and looked carefully, he might see a few shadows of schools of fish. He didn't look that close.

In all this world, no one still yet knew all of what lived in those deepest depths. Like the black ice towers of Jotunheim, Loki found that drowned realm troubling, too.


	16. The Gull Catchers

16\. The Gull Catchers

. . .

 _"_ _Sooo how was your flight?"_

"I'm still collating my final opinion; Fitz has been questioned for the last hour by a remarkably humorless brace of men in customs because they found the scanner in his carry-on." Loki kept the phone pinned between his face and his shoulder, kicking his bag out of the way of another disembarking flow of people while at the same time trying to keep watch on the locked security office. "He somehow managed to accidentally blurt the word 'radiation' before I could do anything to save him. That's a rare talent; my reflexes are not slow by any measure."

 _"_ _Poor Fitz. Wait till you fly a normal commercial flight through Atlanta one of these days. It's gonna be good times. Wear clean underwear, cuz there'll probably be pictures."_ He could all but hear Skye grinning. _"Do Asgardians wear boxers or is it all like loincloths and stuff?"_

"Please tell me you called with vastly more important purpose than that. Also, I don't suppose you could find a way to shorten young Fitz's torment?" Certainly, he could do it himself. However, his way would probably lead to a problematic incident of some sort. Better to ask for a more diplomatic solution.

 _"_ _I want you to know that Strange is sitting on the other side of my desk and the moment I brought up Asgardian panties he got this look on his face like he literally wanted to die. I thought that would make you happy."_ Before he could respond in what was in fact a bemused affirmative, she laughed into the phone. _"I did not believe he even knew how to make that gesture."_

He had to kick his bag again to get it out of the way of another pushing crowd, dropping the one of Fitz's that he'd managed to rescue on top of it. "Skye? Focus, please."

 _"_ _I'm already mailing down to Coulson. We'll probably enact a thrilling rescue via one sharp Philtastic phone call in just a minute here. Okay, real talk: Strange and I have been going over the cult's cruddy forum looking for other patterns of activity. We think we've got so- crap, Phil's e-mailing me back. One second-"_

Loki slumped against the side of a lobby pillar while the sound of a phone being passed around scratched through his hearing. "Strange?"

The man's voice was brisk and businesslike, but underneath Loki could still hear the insulted tone of a medical professional. _"They're watching hospitals, Loki. Children's hospitals, American hospice centers, the VA's network. Volunteers infiltrating where they can and nattering to each other. I've got one enterprising soul thinks they can lift information from Doctors Without Borders. That was cute. I've already made a few calls to old colleagues, because damn them for the attempt."_

"Doesn't seem that unusual; Belasco is preying on the homeless to fill his cult's ranks. The frightened and sick could be another potential resource." He arched an eyebrow at Strange's fairly understandable ire, shifting his weight from one foot to another as he watched a Boeing taxi in through the wide lobby windows.

 _"_ _The chatter seems obscure enough, but they appear to be looking specifically for something. Or someone. Not a recruitment drive. We found a transcript of some prophecy – the key, a specific door, and an offering. What Shuma-Gorath desires most, naturally."_ The voice on the other line turned grim. Loki's eyes widened slightly as he caught up to what the sorcerer meant, almost missing that the door of the security office was creaking open to release his traveling companion back into the wild. _"We're going to run a search of any recent incidents at any of these places, but if I were to bet, I'd say it hasn't happened yet. We're ahead of Belasco now – slightly."_

"What that implies, their idiotic chant. That even Death might die. Is such a murder even possible? Why would she even come here? Earth is a backwater. Granted, it's becoming a _popular_ backwater..."

 _"_ _To your second, I couldn't know. But to the former I guarantee they at least think they've found out how. No point to all this otherwise, by their mad reckoning."_ A brief pause as something occurred to the doctor. _"This... does not surprise you, that Death Herself may become involved?"_

"We've met before. You didn't see that, prodding around the course of my history?" He flagged the wild-eyed looking Fitz down. The scientist was going to have to cut across another disembarking throng to get to him. Good luck, Fitz. He readjusted the phone under his chin as Strange spoke again, reserved.

 _"_ _Her paths are not for anyone to see plain. There are predictions, ripples in the stream where She has been, but you do not fix your eye on Death. Not even when the Vishanti uplift you to the duty and privilege of being their most crucial servant. She marks it as rude. I detest unnecessary rudeness. Also, if I may confide: She gives me the willies."_

"I thought she was rather nice." His voice was casual, but he was grinning down at the arriving Fitz. Fitz shrugged back at him, reaching down to get his other bag and scanning the signs to see where the car rentals were. Loki pointed vaguely in the correct direction, getting a quick nod in response.

 _"_ _I don't even know what to say to that. Regardless, it's a vile threat and not one that should be taken lightly. If they think they can do something to trap or end Her, that's... I cannot stress enough what that means for our universe's existence. I doubt you need me to hold forth overmuch on the topic."_

"No, I do believe I've got it." He rang off, smiling mirthlessly down at Fitz. "So, it gets worse."

The scientist looked up at him with a bedraggled expression. "What else is new?"

. . .

Fitz watched Loki out of the corner of his eye where the demigod slumped in the passenger seat of the rented Fiesta. "So, what you're telling me, Death is real? Like, actually a real deity or suchlike? A _person_ even?" He shivered. Unwillingly, he remembered drowning. Coming the closest he'd ever been to that final horizon; close enough to scar his mind and health for a long time. He didn't know how to feel about that having an identity and a will of its own. Part of him was trying to be offended by the unscientific nature of this information. The rest of him had long since gotten used to legends blending with the everyday norm. Cue Exhibit A in the seat next to him.

"Coulson didn't tell that story? I suppose he might not, it was a bit stressful for everyone involved." On Loki's lap, the scanner was active and continually checking their surroundings every three seconds or so. Fitz turned at the GPS's indicated corner, coming up on another NHS hospital in the West End of London to see if they could kill two birds with one stone. On the one hand, it meant expanding the scanner's coverage of the city, on the other, they were getting close enough to various hospitals so that Skye could infiltrate their lines and look for possible cultist problems. "Yes. He met her, Fitz, in what was remarkably cordial circumstances. The result of a... private matter of mine."

Fitz looked over at the barely noticeable change in the man's tone, seeing, to his surprise, an expression that looked troubled and sad both. No, Coulson didn't talk about the time Loki had pulled him to Asgard to ask a favor. All he knew is that both the returning Director and the fallen Prince had looked completely worn out when they came back to Earth – and Loki was unceremoniously given a job.

Loki didn't seem to notice his study, still looking distantly troubled. "Though if we must be accurate, that would technically not have been the first time they met... and also at my doing, to boot. Regardless. She's an incarnation of a universal concept, something like an avatar of herself. A constant and a variable. Approachable and at the same time ineffable. It's complicated."

"But if these guys can corner her physical incarnation and destroy her, we'd be in it deep." Fitz shook his head. It didn't seem logical. Less so than usual, anyway.

Loki's voice took on that familiar sarcastic lilt. "We'd all be immortal, go insane probably within a few centuries, and create of our reality a kind of seething cancerverse where life has become cheap and meaningless. I shudder to think of what just a few millennia of that would reap. Corrupted, mindless entropy is its own horror. I repeat you – we'd be in it deep. Immortality has its charms, but there's a certain irreplaceable value to life's risks."

"Okay, but then why does she joyride around in any sort of mortal incarnation? Seems risky. Like, apocalyptically risky." The GPS began to talk to him in a mutilated Scouse accent. He ignored it; he damn well knew how to get around London. Not as well as Glasgow – and at that thought, he had a tiny pang of homesickness. Maybe if this turned out all right, he'd jaunt up. Just for a little visit. With everything else going on, he had a sneaking suspicion Loki would let him get away with it.

Loki frowned, unaware of Fitz's traveling thoughts. "I think it's yet more complicated than that. Death has always been capable of presenting incarnate, this any sorcerer knows. Her name is in all the books. But when I met her last, she was indeed wearing a mortal's form. Hiding in it, I think. And so, she _chose_ a risk. There was an implication of some private matter of her own. She didn't confide in me what she was up to, and Coulson seemed to believe we would not be seeing her again in that shape. I can guess a few motives, but not how her actions are intended to further them."

"What was she doing that you met her?"

"She was stealing books out of a galactic library, where she was using me as what you term a 'fall-guy' for a while. Did a fain good job of it, too, as I didn't catch on right away."

Fitz let that hang in the pine-scented air of the rental, not sure where to go with that information.

"Mhm. It's a stumper." Loki slumped down further in the seat, still fiddling with the scanner. From time to time he lifted up to stare steadily out the windows. The frown kept deepening. Fitz turned his attention back to the streets, content to wait it out. If something was troubling the man, it'd come up.

. . .

Belasco sat cross-legged atop the last of six great churches built in the city of London by the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor – a classical parish in Bloomsbury called St. George, only a few blocks away from the children's hospital on Ormond. From his vantage and with his gifts, he could easily lift his head and pierce his vision through the light of day and see within the doors of that healing shelter. He did not. Any flutter of magic too soon and She would know he was looming close. He looked within instead and kept his presence well-veiled, his legs crossed and his arms alight in a statuesque mockery of the Lotus position Doctor Strange used for his own similar astral travels. His body did not touch the stone of the church in favor of his own levitations. His face was a flame and his lips curved in a way that was obscene.

Hawksmoor was once rumored to have been a Satanist; a gifted architect who had either accidentally or purposefully placed his great creations in a pentagram that covered eighteenth century London under its points. Belasco knew the bleaker tales of Hawksmoor to be nothing more than fiction, blending together with the gruesome old stories that swirled around Whitechapel just to the east. He also knew that such fictions had power, pulled together by fortuitous symbolism and collective belief, and so he took control of this old star for his own purposes. Its power now veiled him – not only from other practitioners of that mystic art, but from _her._ Even if she suspected another threat, not even she could find him wrapped in the mythos of old London. After all, he'd escaped Death once before. She would _not_ escape _him_.

He had already prepared the northern lair of that old 'Great Beast' to suit his needs. It would serve as ritual site and prison both. All was ready – now the only thing he needed was the timing.

Inside the flames of his mind, he watched the trail of a sorcerer flicker through the West End of London. A trail blended with the fading trace of promethium, the dry smell of his own dead world, and so he knew the track he followed to be the correct one. He could sense a human accompanying the mage. That was of no importance, he decided. Only the one that killed his pet was of any threat, and so, of any value to his great God.

His lips curved in more tightly, the corners becoming a bow of rage and hate. With a deep inhale, he let out a shout that reverberated not through the air to be heard by the mundane, but along the flickering trails of ether and the grey all sorcerers knew.

He was ready. Forged by hate and fire and millennia of preparation.

That false would-be godling couldn't possibly be.

. . .

Fitz slammed hard on the brakes when a dead-white Loki jolted up in his seat. He looked around wildly in the way both May and Hunter had drilled into him, looking for any visible threat, something that might have set off the abrupt reaction. Behind him, a tiny Citroen laid on its feeble horn. He waved a hand to tell it to go away, hoping they would. The car peeled off with its squealing tires telling the pair of agents how dreadfully offended they were, leaving them on a side street that was otherwise quiet. With that taken care of, he went back to Loki. "What happened? What's got you?"

Loki said nothing at first. Leaning forward, he could see that the green eyes weren't focused on him. Rather, they stared glassily through to something only he could see. His thin lips were moving slightly, the words unreadable.

The effect was unsettling. "Loki?"

Loki's tense, distant expression smoothed out and became lined with familiar fury instead. His voice was deathly cold, weaponizing that anger. "I'm being called out." He reached out and pulled the GPS out of its holder. "We need to go back east to find the source. A little north, I think. I don't know the map well from here. Probably still near a medical facility, I'd think. Just not one we've passed yet."

Fitz could see him tapping for general locations, saw him start the word 'Hospital.' He grimaced. "I should call it in, Loki. If it's him threatening you."

"It's a sorcerer's challenge. Belasco, I think, by its form and intensity. Alien, like me but not at all like me." He sounded distracted, looking up through the windshield at something Fitz could never see. "Wouldn't bother yet. Damn it, what am I looking for?"

"It's probably a trap."

"Oh, undoubtedly." He grudgingly gave up the device after Fitz tried twice to snatch it away from his fingers. Unable to resist a chance to be helpful, Fitz went right to his first obvious guess. "Where's Ormond?"

"Northern bit of London. That's the Great Ormond Street Hospital. Extremely famous. Went there once when I got sick on vacation down from home, did me right I suppose. Someone gave 'em the rights to Peter Pa- you don't care right now." Fitz winced to end his own rambling and set the GPS back, trying to dig for his phone in his jacket pocket. "I'm going to call this in."

Loki's steely hand stopped him. "Don't." He narrowed his eyes at Fitz's aghast expression. "Not yet. He's arrogant enough to bellow for me. If we call down the storm upon him too quickly, he'll withdraw. We won't know where he's going or what his next plans are. _At least_ we go and see. Track him. Scout his purpose. Just as we intended."

Fitz stared at him, half-disbelieving in the other man's persistence. There was a valid point in his logic, but - "You shouldn't try and engage him."

"Who said I will?"

He kept staring, knowing Loki better than that. The green eyes stared back, mild and with the truth unreadable in them. Grudgingly, he decided to start with a compromise. "I'll get us close. The _moment_ you have better information, I'm calling it in and we pull back. End of discussion."

He didn't trust the polite inclination of Loki's head, narrowing his eyes as the pale face turned away. Arrogance – the Asgardian had enough self-introspection to know that flaw was buried as deep in his psyche as much as it was in Strange's. But not enough to fully recognize that it drove him into nearly every bad decision Fitz could summarize. The second, the very _second_ he himself saw something odd, there was no way he wasn't going to call every emergency code on his phone. He was not going to get ditched in favor of the demigod's drive towards self-destruction.

With a mutter and a fresh bundle of gnawing worry, he slammed the Fiesta back into action, thinking over the best way to sneak towards Bloomsbury.


	17. Locked

17\. Locked

. . .

"You're sensing anything?" He looked over at the frustrated expression that sat plain on Loki's face. "Take that as a no."

"Every damned faction of this cult's been given some veil to make themselves faded out. Thin. Hard to trace. I didn't sense your stalkers until they called us, and I should well have been able to. That's a dark gift, and a rare one. Difficult to draw so widely. Belasco is veiled in the same fashion, only moreso. There must be great power to draw upon buried here. Something he found to tap into." The sleek black head kept craning up to examine rooftops and vantage points. They drove slowly past the eastern side of the hospital.

The fact that Loki was clearly unsettled and frustrated made Fitz worried. He tried to not overdo the concern in his voice, focusing on the road instead. "Ca-can he sense us?"

"He could if I'm not careful... been trying to mimic something of what he's doing. Reverse-engineer it, so to speak, based off the few whispers I _have_ found." That explained what he was doing with his hands. Small, methodical movements. It wasn't often that the Asgardian's magic had any visible component, his signature practice of the art seeming to be found in its subtlety. That alone clued Fitz in to the effort he was making. "Bastard's good. He tracked me down either by magic or that damned promethium when making his challenge. Or both, like as not." He bared his teeth at nothing. "You know this area better than I, it seems. Any thoughts?"

 _You're actually asking me?_ Fitz absorbed that for a moment. "Uhh. This is the major hospital in the area. Very old neighborhood, very stately. Um. Some universities about." He racked his brain for trivia. "There's an old landmark church just up the way from here. Some sort of story to it that I never cared about."

"Is it suitably dramatic? If it's dramatic, it seems like the sort of thing that would apply here." Fitz could see the black eyebrow arch in interest.

He couldn't keep the old wryness out of his voice. "It's London, Loki, the locals thrive on drama. Perfect territory for your type."

"Says the Scotsman." Loki's smirk said he'd noticed the tone.

"Damn right." He couldn't resist a grin, one that faded quickly as Loki started tugging at the passenger door while they were still in motion. "Hey!"

"Pull over. I'm going on foot. Getting hard to mask both of us and the vehicle. I'll get a better scent of the bastard's trail this way."

"You ca- _aaaaargh!_ " It was either watch Loki practically roll out of the vehicle into the busy road or give in and jerk into a side street to steal one of a few open spots. His nature demanded he pull over, so he did.

. . .

"Open up, Ana. There's a lass." The nurse poured the liquid antibiotic into the fidgeting girl's mouth with a smile, so focused on the child and disposing of the plastic cup that she nearly missed the teen skittering quickly out of her shared room to stare out the windows at something. She patted Ana on her shoulder to dismiss her and got up from her stool to study the new situation. "Salima! Don't push yourself."

The girl didn't seem to hear her. The nurse pursed her lips at that. Salima was normally a very tractable young woman; easygoing, active, and alert, with a hard core of stubbornness that _never_ came up to fight the nurses on the youth ward. She saved it to fight her illness, sweet thing. But here she was, tall and on fire with something the nurse had never seen before in her, staring with an expression of utter shock out at something on the street below. "Salima!"

Instead of answering her, the girl tried to pull at the window with a wild, low mutter. Well, that wasn't to be borne unchallenged. The nurse marched over from behind her counter and grabbed – gently, but firm – at her narrow wrist. "What's got into you, sweetie?"

The golden-brown eyes finally looked up into hers, but it was another moment before they actually focused on her face. Before that, there was something odd about that glazed stare. Something chilly and old. The nurse shook it off as a mistake, a goof on her own part when the girl spoke. "I-I thought I saw someone I recognized out there, Miss Wiese. Someone I haven't seen in a while. That's all. I wanted to call down to him." Hesitant and gentle, there was the Salima she recognized. Her hand relaxed on Salima's arm. "Is there..."

The nurse shook her head. "You know we keep it tightly controlled in here to make sure you all get better. No windows on this floor. Better to call him later. You-" She gasped as Salima tore herself away from her grip and made the quickest bolt she'd ever seen clean past her tall form and heading straight for the locked doors as if that didn't matter in the least. They opened for her as one of the orderlies came in with the lunch trays and she pelted through without hesitation. The orderly was too stunned to even think of stopping her – it was a children's ward, not a prison. The restrictions were in place to keep them safe, they were never designed for abrupt break-outs.

Around her, other children in the communal lounge were looking up at the nurse in shock. Voices began to chatter excitedly and she had to raise her voice sharply to try and get control of the situation back. "Francoise! She's going to get herself hurt! Call down and get security to slow the lass!" As fast as Salima was going... it was to be a near thing, at best. What in the _world_ had gotten into her? Wiese started to hurry towards the doors herself.

The startled orderly bustled back out the door, the nurse hot on his heels.

. . .

Belasco watched the strings begin to twine together behind his eyes – his fate, the sorcerer's chain, the barely visible silken thread hidden inside a child's waning path. He began to smile as he unfolded his legs and drifted down to the sidewalk to meet the future.

It was going to be _perfect._

 _. . ._

Fitz had to hustle to keep up with Loki's absurdly long legs, dodging a few other pedestrians that seemed to behave as if Fitz himself was invisible in the other man's wake. No magic to that effect, just ordinary tunnel vision. They were passing in front of the children's hospital, the man's sharp green eyes fixed on the barely visible roof of the church up the street. In Fitz's pocket, the mineral scanner had long since started functionally losing its mind. He'd put it on vibrate the second he stumbled out of the car, the signal it was reading simply telling him 'here,' and 'everywhere.' It was where they needed to be. Finding anything more specific than that was up to the pair. "Anything?"

Loki still didn't answer him, still moving fast up the street with an intensity of purpose in every step. Fitz nearly had to elbow a jogger out of his way to catch up another few steps. The jogger had stopped for something, he didn't know what. Some minor commotion going on at the hospital. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the start of some ruckus at one of the main doors. He opened his mouth to point it out, but before he could he all but ran into Loki's back.

Now the sorcerer was looking around wildly. "I can sense him. I can't..." He hissed in a breath and whispered it back out. _"Belasco._ Show your damned self."

There was nothing. No response to the quiet challenge. A few pedestrians, the chaos building beyond them. Fitz looked back again as what was almost a familiar sound came from the hospital. Some word in the growing noise that hooked at his ear. He could see a pair of security guards trying to calm a young Indian girl – one who was staring right at them with an expression that was both serene and intense. He opened his mouth again, this time in shock. He could swear she was mouthing the word _Loki._

Fitz looked back at him as Loki started moving forward once more, his hands in position. To do what, Fitz didn't know. Magic, certainly. He hadn't heard the young woman. Fitz started fumbling in his pocket for his phone while the man peeled away, intent on his own mission. "Lo-"

 _Something_ brushed past him, some quick rush of presence followed by the smell of guttering fire and the sense of things slithering in deep shadows. All he _saw_ was a shaggy-looking but ordinary man in a long brown coat, one hand in a heavy pocket. The other hand came up in a sharp gesture. Fitz felt suddenly ill, staggering to the side of a cast-iron fence to prop himself up while he put his own hand out, trying one more time to get Loki's attention before something happened. The phone dropped back into the depths of his jacket, temporarily forgotten in some mind-numbing swirl.

In the space of a second, the demigod whirled, eyes bright with fury as he sensed the ambush

coming up behind him. His pale hands lifted, ready to summon something to his defense, put some sort of attack towards what Fitz realized was Belasco himself, marching towards the enraging Loki without any hesitation or fear. Fitz braced himself against the fence, waiting for whatever sorcerous hell was about to be unleashed.

And in the next second, Belasco seemed to _jump_ forward a few feet, abruptly cutting a few yards of distance between them. _A traveler's gifts, said Strange_. It bought him an unnatural advantage, making him too quick, bringing him too close for even Asgardian – or Jotun - reflexes.

Seeing the world in slow motion, Fitz could only watch as Belasco's hand emerged from his coat and plunged the Promethium Key through Loki's chest in a single quick motion. There was no mark when he pulled the reddish stake back out of the slender torso, no rush of blood following the stabbing. It was as if the thing had gone through some other, unseen layer of the man's persona to leave the pale skin itself untouched. Nonetheless, Fitz watched in silent, struck horror as the light abruptly snapped out of the green eyes. Loki toppled to the ground in a graceless heap, his face waxy and slack.

Belasco turned to stare at him, and his eyes were strange and bleak in a ruddy, gleaming face. A man burned by some inner fire, burning still. Then he grinned, the grin itself nauseating and insane to behold. Fitz tried to lunge, panicked, confused by what happened to Loki. But anything he could do was meaningless. The attacker saw no threat in him, disregarded him entirely. Instead, Belasco neatly sidestepped his lunge and looked back towards the hospital with purpose lining his face.

Fitz realized he was locking eyes with the girl. She struggled against the guards, now trying to go back in. Get herself to safety, he realized. In a flash, he understood what _that_ meant. Who she was, and maybe, why she'd tried to call out. And then Belasco was leaping again, twitching through the space between himself and the doorway of the hospital, shoving the guards away easily and grabbing the girl first by her t-shirt and then wrapping his arm around her neck. He was careful to not touch her directly. Brown hands slapped at his covered elbow, while the eyes, still not panicked, turned to Fitz as he fumbled again for his phone. He couldn't look away.

He froze when she mouthed something to him, the words almost lost before both she and Belasco disappeared entirely from the scene. Fitz pieced what she said together with a mixture of confusion and relief, dropping next to the fallen Loki with fresh determination. In his hand, he thumbed his way across all the emergency alerts, settling first on the one that would get Coulson on the line directly.

He looked up at the hospital as the phone began to ring, then down at the prone, cold form of Loki. He tugged at it anyway, believing what he'd read on the girl's – on Death's lips was true. She would know, after all. Meanwhile, he was going to have to get them both off the street, and quick, in case some of Belasco's people came to finish him off. Dear god, the man was heavy. Was it because he was an alien, or was it just part of being tall as all bloody hell? Fitz tugged again to make a few inches of headway, wishing Coulson would hurry and pick up, although it was only on its second ring.

The girl's words, the only hope Fitz felt: _He isn't dead!_


	18. The Magpie Council

18\. The Magpie Council

. . .

 _He only knew he was falling, and that suddenly, he no longer was._

 _Loki brought himself to his feet, feeling somehow both light and heavy all at once, and realized immediately what had occurred to him. He bared his teeth at the nothing that enveloped him, mindlessly furious with how quick his encounter with Belasco had turned against him. Then he tamed that fury into a controlled, chilly seethe, acknowledging that anything else certainly wasn't going to get him anywhere. Much less back into a physical state. Only then could he consider revenge._

 _He took a single step forward into and through the nothing, to see just what sort of place he was trapped in. The shape of his soul jar. And upon beholding it and its current pair of denizens clear and plain, knew it was not quite a place he had ever been before. Not a 'between' he knew. There was nothing familiar to what he saw – and yet, noted his troubled mind, that wasn't quite true, either._

 _In the center of the drifting, changing space lit through with a soft green was a black pillar. Atop it sat a golden helm – or an ornate golden crown – or a pair of curling golden horns. Pecking at the veiled floor, their beaks filling the thin air with the echoes of sound, were a handful of black and white magpies._ Yes, very well, _he thought to himself, annoyed._ The symbolism seems blatant enough. Some metaphorical prison meant for my soul's withering, represented by my old Asgardian heraldry. My horns, broken crowns, etcetera. _He frowned at it all, displeased while his thoughts ticked on._ Feels similar enough to what I've gone through before. So what's the damned riddle? How do I get myself out?

 _There was a boy at his feet, the small form slumped wearily onto his rump with his knees drawn up to his soft green tunic. He lifted his round, innocent face up to Loki as if he could hear his thoughts and underneath the thin band of gold on his brow were two endless black pits for eyes._ "I am the crime that will not be forgiven," _the boy whispered to him in a voice frozen by time, death, and void. The young head drooped again, the interloper apparently forgotten._

 _Loki stepped away from the ghost-boy, unnerved. The tall old man in the archaic green armor on the other side of the pillar lifted his head to stare at him. His eyes were unfathomable black pools too, but something about his profile seemed limned by damnation's flame. Loki put up a hand, not wanting to hear what this strange green shade wanted to say, but there was no stopping the haunt from its purpose._ "I am the echo of a scream," _rattled the man's uneven voice from somewhere within that distant, unceasing void._

"This has nothing to do with me," _Loki snarled back, unwilling to consider either ghost longer than he had to. He strode away into the green mist to seek or forge some other exit, content to find that eventually the empty expanse curled in around him in a long, tight corridor. Until there were the mirrors. Again, the mirrors, that chasing echo of a time he'd willingly gone between worlds in search of some other fate._

 _He looked into none of them._

. . .

Tony Stark flew along the western English shoreline, the Mark 45 suit gliding almost soundlessly through the churning, humid air. Currently, it was his favorite Iron Man rig. Hands down. Sure, that'd probably change next week, but for now, this one handled like a high end Ferrari. Sporty red trim, a snazzy hexagon casing his current iteration of the arc reactor, and Friday had access to all the best satellite radio stations. Why not? Hell, he owned half of them. At least, he was pretty sure he did. He jimmied along a quick turn, getting a wave from a startled fisherman as he listened to the SHIELD chatter coming in hot over the lines.

 _"_ _I told you, she said he's not dead! I have to believe her, as weird as that is. I'm not going to leave him."_ Kid sounded like he was dragging something heavy. _"I've gotten in a safe position down a nearby alley, getting directions out now."_

 _"_ _I've got Strange setting up a travel plan, Fitz. Apparently we're gonna ship to you even quicker than Stark can get there, so just hold the line."_ Tony lifted an eyebrow inside his helm. Magic. Wild. Anyway, at least Phil sounded relatively sedate about the show going down in London. Bit tense, but always a pro. Took a lot to rattle that guy. Definitely not an LMD or a clone or whatever. That was good ol' Phil. The secret-keeping jerk. _"Stark?"_

"I'm just offshore, Coulson. You want me to join the party? I heard a challenge. Race you."

The response was fast and businesslike. _"No. I need you to run that scan across the entire UK ASAP. Bust the sound barrier if you gotta, get showy. I don't care. According to Strange, Belasco does have limits and he's not going to want to jump far with his prize. He planned around this situation and we're back to playing on his timetable."_

"He could go to France. Quick jaunt through the Chunnel. I would, anyway. Wine's better." The remark went down like a lead balloon. Fine, whatever. "Working on it. This guy managed to steal a jump on your pet jerk sorcerer. Strange worried the same's about to happen to him?"

 _"_ _I'll take care of this end, Stark. Don't worry about us. Just find the promethium trail."_ The line to SHIELD went abruptly dead.

He flickered his gaze around the internal control panel of the suit, making sure his current AI was online and listening in. "Friday, call me crazy, but ol' Phil sounded legit concerned about the guy that, you know I think I remember this correctly, stabbed the life outta him." He snapped into a graceful dime-turn in midair, deciding to start with a series of broad swoops over London airspace to see if there was any sort of followable trail. Friday, meanwhile, had successfully learned to identify a rhetorical statement and didn't rise to the bait. "Good girl. Think you got that one down quicker than Jarvis. Although he liked dry sarcasm a little more. Anyway. Okay, grid me up some land and retask the external sensor array in line with this morning's spec outline. We're gonna play this like the most boring game of Battleship you've ever watched."

Friday had something to say about that. _"I have examined forty-five million iterations of Battleship, Connect 4, Minesweeper, and Candy Crush, Mr. Stark. They are all remarkably dry, from the viewpoint of tactical considerations. Could I interest you in a nice game of Catan instead?"_

"You're such a smartie. Just run that grid for me."

. . .

 _In time, the long hall of mirrors finally led to another destination, a dark portal to some other destination lined at first in soft light. He stepped through with relief, only to find what he had already seen before._

 _The glowing, green mist. The silent ghosts. The chattering magpies. The black pillar. The gold crown._

 _With a fresh snarl, he chose another direction and stormed down it before the ghosts could address him again. Instead of something new, the corridor eventually closed around him afresh and now he regarded the echoing hall with less vicious hope than previous. There were only the mirrors and the pillar. Mirrors, and the pillar. He didn't stop walking, didn't stop trying to change directions. Once, he tried backtracking. Then he began to run. It all led to the same place. The choices given to him were no choice whatsoever. There was only the cycle, unbreakable._

 _In a fit of rage he stopped in the hall and screamed. Time left him frozen somewhere. Space was narrowed into the dwindling shape of his soul. There was only the prison Belasco's key had plunged him into, fraying at the edges of his mind. And the mirrors._

 _The gods-damned mirrors. He strode up a few paces and then, more desperate to see something new rather than willing to accept what they might show, he stared into one._

 _For a second, he recoiled as he stared back. Then the mirror image looked away to break their joined stare, his profile lined with a soft green glint that told Loki there was an illusion in place. In the corridor, through the mirror, he himself could see only what was true. But the mirrored Loki leaned back in a thick black king's robe as if he were heavy and greatly old, Gungnir in his steady hand and he understood in a cold flash the nature of the illusion this other self wore._

 _The mirrors showed where he_ should _have been at that very moment. Had he not made another choice. Taken another fall down a different road._

 _He tore his gaze away from the other self and saw around the false Odin the open throne room of Asgard, supplicants coming and going, none the wiser to what truly sat upon the throne. In the distance, if he could but crane through, he would see Heimdall's observatory. The restored rainbow bridge. Possibly he might even see Thor, given enough time._

 _But as he watched, he felt a prickle of some instinctive understanding. In the mirror, an undeniable fact: There, on that timeline, Odin was dead. There was only_ that _Loki. With a painful swallow, he looked again at the prince pretending to be a king, and did not see on the cold, pale face the weariness that helped push his own fall._

 _He saw madness still burning bright just under the surface, the steadfast belief in that grim path, the choice to disregard choice and charge ahead boldly on his disastrous plan. In the flicker of those eyes, familiar and yet all wrong, first he saw the red-eyed monster that he feared most. The thing he knew he could be._

 _Then he saw Hel itself, waiting inside that regal figure to be made incarnate. And recognizing now that bleak place of horrors had taken hold of that other soul, waiting to be loosed upon Asgard and who knew where else, he staggered back, nauseated at what all that meant._

I am not Ragnarok's tool. And yet, I am and still could be. _Unwilling, he looked up again at the smug figure on his throne, no doubt the half-mad snake-smile filtering into something far more paternal and wise for any onlookers. For a trace second, he felt an absurd and brutal sense of personal clarity cut through him. He permitted that moment to speak aloud in the dialect of the humans, directing his snarl at the figure on its stolen throne._ "I'm an asshole."

 _The damned Loki in the mirror didn't deign to give his watching shade a response._

 _. . ._

Fitz looked up at the rustle at the mouth of the tight alley he'd successfully managed to pull Loki's body into, gasping in relief as he saw the arriving pair. "Over here!"

Coulson whirled, his hand shoving Strange's absurdly flowing red cloak away to trot down towards him. He dropped to the scientist's side and immediately went for the basic emergency checklist, his fingers digging under Loki's sharply defined jaw to try and find a pulse.

"I should be doing that, Director Coulson," said Strange. Around him, the cloak flowed and reformed like it had a life of its own. Fitz stared at it, realizing that the golden clasp at the throat – one single, inhuman eye – was blinking back. Maybe it did. "I've a quite nice medical degree. Framed and everything."

"And I get into fights a lot." He pulled back anyway, his chin jutting at the doctor to tag him in.

Strange peeled off a black glove as he approached. First, he thumbed open an eye to check for changes in the iris, frowning when there wasn't any. Then he too reached under the chin to find any hint of a pulse. His lips silently counted off a cadence. "Weak and thready. Unusually slow. A lesser professional might indeed think him dead." He pulled his hand away to regard the young man. "Tell me again what happened. Leave nothing out."

Fitz did, Strange nodding occasionally as his face grew dour. "So much for the inert, pointless trinket," he said. To be fair, there was nothing light nor humorous in his voice. Phil's hand snapped out to grab him by the high red collar anyway. "H-"

Coulson couldn't stop giving him a brisk shake. "I don't give a good god-damn about all our mistakes right now. Drop that crap in the past, let's focus on right now. How do we fix him?"

Strange looked down into the tense face, understanding that the man's frustration wasn't with him. That it was, in fact, a friend's fear. He kept his voice calming, knowing that would do little good. Nonetheless, he tried for some decent bedside manner. The effort mattered. "There are only two methods that I can think of. Both are constrained by certain needs – medically, he cannot remain like this forever. Now, one method involves getting our own hands on the Key."

"The other?"

"Some God tosses him a mulligan and he crawls back through the void by himself." Strange watched the face go red. Next to him, Fitz tensed. "I'm not being needlessly trite or cruel, gentlemen. Those are his options. If we have _time,_ I'll supplicate to the Vishanti directly to guide him. They... owe him one. It may be that's a better solution than trying to steal back the Key before dealing with its current handler."

"I'll get Stark back on the line. Can you do your communion thing now?"

Strange looked up at the silhouettes filling the far end of the alley, where they themselves had only just arrived. One had a crowbar. The curved tip of it clinked down against the concrete in an audible threat. "...I think we're about to be a little busy, sir." He flowed to his feet, the magic cloak swirling around him and filling his senses with what he needed to know. "But truthfully... only a little."

. . .

 _He no longer had any sense of how long he'd been in that broken place. It might as well be eternity. He slumped down against the corridor walls, unwilling to go back to the empty space with its pillar and its ghosts, unwilling to look again into the mirror and see all the horrifying things he was doing or had done or, worse, might yet do. He felt nothing at his back or beneath his rump, for he knew the walls around him weren't real. Nonetheless, he felt cold, trapped by the dark. Here he might die after all, despite his hopes. Despite his choices. Still and ever, he wanted to live. Even if those darker fates were yet possible._

 _So consumed, he missed the soft padding of bare feet at first. Until the sound drew close enough for him to see its source. Weary and worn, he lifted his head slightly and saw the black-nailed toes and the torn hem of a man's slim pants. He looked up higher – green scale armor in a battered coat, and above, a wolf man with the smile of a snake. A pale face so finely angular that it was nearly androgynous under a shaggy, short black mane, the crown of horns snapped and ruined above deep-set green eyes. The man smiled easily down at him, fangy and fangless both – one gap in the teeth where an incisor should have been._ "So, you're _clearly_ having a day. What happened?"

 _Loki arched a single thin eyebrow at the weirdly cheery question._ "My soul has been locked out of my body by a sorcerer I managed to critically misjudge."

"That's a bummer." _The wolf-man with the fangy grin dropped down next to him, resting a hand atop his own knee. There was an echo to that grace, something kin in the angles and planes of the almost feral features. Something that looked right, despite the mixture of that regal accent and his casual words._

 _Feeling relatively certain he knew the answer, he asked the question anyway._ "Who are you?"

 _The answer still held a surprise._ "I'm the God of Stories," _said the wolf-man matter-of-factly, the fine-drawn features shifting across a sea of possibilities before resuming the shaggy visage._ "I'm Loki."

"Well," _said Loki, clasping his hands together on his lap while he regarded this new strange mirror next to him._ "That's going to become terribly confusing."


	19. The God of Stories

19\. The God of Stories

. . .

The modified mineral scan had no trouble homing in on the abrupt burst of particle activity in London, but that wasn't what Stark wanted. He zipped along the outskirts of the city center, high enough and fast enough to barely be a blip on their radar. For everything else, he paved his own way through their tracking systems to kill an alarm before it went off. Then he kept going, west to east, checking the coastlines and the rural towns, finding little at first.

Then one tiny little dot on the scan. And another. "Come on, funny guy, gimme a third." The scanner did. "Friday, let's do some triangulation, run a predictive model. We got Northampton, Birmingham, and... what looks like Sheffield here coming up. What's that give you?"

 _"_ _Steady trajectory going north-northwest. Determinator: Fourth ping will swing closer to either Leeds or Manchester."_

"You want to place a bet with me?" He adjusted his flight course to skirt close to both of those, Manchester first. It would take less than a minute for that to enter ping range.

 _"_ _Current probability matrix is fifty-fifty, Mr. Stark. But I will call for Manchester."_

"Well I'm going to say Le-" The HUD pinged at him and he started drawling his words. "...like, I'm not gonna bet. It's tacky to bet. Sorry I asked."

 _"_ _You have forfeited your wager, Mr. Stark, and I claim the win. My predictive model suggests 97% probability you were going to say Leeds. Subsequently, I request gold-plated cabling caps in the third controls bay. The upgrade to performance is negligible, but it looks nice."_

"Friday, baby, I've taught you some expensive tastes." He braked slightly, ready to tangent onto a new course.

 _"_ _Yes, sir. Updated predictive model suggests target: Belasco is committed, at the very least, to Glasgow, Scotland. Next trajectory update dependent on that reading. May I add an observation?"_

"Go."

 _"_ _Unknown variable in play. Target: Belasco's capabilities undefined. Is his transport ability limited to short bursts necessitating mundane travel previous – or does he wish to be followed?"_

"Friday, that's upsetting. Bless your mechanical soul for thinking of it. Let's get our haggis on and text down to the London Underground with all of that." A soft chime informed him she was already on the case. He kicked at the sky and kept cutting through it at an easy Mach 1, humming the theme to Ghostbusters under his breath for the simple fact that it was amusing him. Beat worrying about the radio silence due south.

. . .

"You caught me at a good time. Or a really bad one, not sure which. Anyway, I happened to be still passing through on my way to the next bit of my tale. Wherever that ends up." _The wolf-God loped down the corridor, glancing over his shoulder at Loki with an amiable look on his face._ "You look tense. Is it the pillar room? Are they still in there?"

"The ghosts? They are. They're not _my_ ghosts." _He couldn't help but sound grudging. He felt done with such trials, this insistence on being forced again and again into self-introspection. What was left to see? He shoved it away, focusing on the barefooted bit of merry walking anarchy that didn't seem at all troubled by their surroundings._ "And the pillar itself. Rather on the nose, isn't it?"

"They're not there for me anymore, so it's your problem whether you want to accept it or not. They've got a piece of themselves in you, too, just not probably in the way you might think. The symbols mean something else for you than it did me. Part of the whole 'layers of the multi-verse' thing we Lokis have going. Pages of the book pressing close against each other until the ink bleeds through." _The god flicked a hand in the air in some vague attempt to demonstrate._ "For me, it's just a room between the seconds of now. Like any other. I already changed. I already burned. You're still dangling on the high cliff, scrabbling around for purchase."

 _He stopped in his tracks, staring indignantly at the broad back of the younger deity._ "I damned well am not! I made my choice. It's long since over. I'm _done_ with that _thing_ in the mirror and all it stands for."

"You did make a choice, and that's incredibly valuable, Loki." _The God turned around to examine him, otherwise unmoved by his anger. Like he expected it. An irreverent grin quirked at the corner of his mouth, showing the place where a fang once was._ "The problem is you didn't go hard enough. You haven't wholly committed to a new road yet, not with all of you. You're still scared and alone and you _hate_ that. So instead of lashing out – an improvement, granted - you instead stuck yourself somewhere in the middle, thinking you've removed yourself from the situation and that's enough. You fought back a little against the Chitauri and called it good. You went to hide, which wasn't all bad. You made some progress there. Found something you needed, though you haven't told yourself that, either. You won't admit anything to yourself until you get your face smashed into it. The problem with all this is, and here I am to blow the horn – the main story's still going on around you. The end is coming. The war. You haven't changed _that."_

"How do you mean?" _He was afraid he knew, but wouldn't show it. He stopped a flush of anger from coloring him a second later, realizing even his small actions might prove this half-feral man right._ "How do you know any of this?"

 _"_ You're smart enough to know the answer to the second, Loki. Because you're Loki. And so am I – how could I _not_ know the story? Especially right now, where it's as much mine as yours." _He gave a light shrug._ "Besides, stories are kind of my thing. Tropes. Patterns. Beginnings and endings _._ As to the first? Well, you know the answer to that, too." _The grin deepened and then faded away again._ "Tell you this much right now. Running can't stop what's coming. Sooner or later, it'll catch up with you _._ Then the choices you have left will begin to narrow, and it'll come down to which way you want to burn. Because we do. It's how it ends. With Ragnarok, with fire, with being consumed by ourselves and our inability to ever change. Always a variation on that. Unless we find some other way to live. Unless we fight our way out. That's rare. The final god for us isn't Death. She's never scared me. It's the Status Quo. _That_ bastard locks the cycle closed and swallows the key."

 _Beyond the God, Loki could see the flickering green mists come closer again. He felt slightly ill, pursing his lips instead of showing his discomfort._ "And you found such a way out of the cycle?"

"I think I did. I'm still finding out." _The God of Stories beckoned him out of the corridor and into the nothing-place with its black pillar and its trapped ghosts, one bare foot in each place._ "Meanwhile, I think that what I learned so far might help you. I have a little time before I have to get where I need to be."

 _He didn't want to take the step forward, fresh mistrust burrowing deep._ "Why bother?"

 _The grin came back, broad and toothy._ "Because you _are_ trying. Not many of us do, you know. Not really, not without the lies and the self-destruction and the entrapment. Those few that try usually fall like the rest. You're getting somewhere, though, and you've got that one piece of the puzzle that I found, too. It got my attention. Maybe we can make it easier for the next ones that try to get out of the old traps." _A black-nailed thumb jerked towards the mist, his face creasing impatiently._ "Get in the damn room, you fancy chicken. Quit running. Your body doesn't have forever to wait around, and you're going to have to make one more choice."

"Die, or-"

"Live. But not without a price." _The God's wry grin turned into something sorrowful._ "I'm sorry about that. All the Lokis come to this place eventually. It's always in the third act. And none of us leave here unchanged."

 _Beyond the end of the hall of mirrors, Loki saw the lost little boy lift his head to stare. He stared back, fear replacing the mistrust and the cold sense of being lost. His disdain for the pillar and its symbol fell away and he knew it for what it truly meant._

 _The death and the rebirth of the soul-self._

 _. . ._

Fitz stayed hunkered protectively over the still form of Loki, one hand holding the Starkphone in place where it lay on the thin, frighteningly still chest. He stared up at Coulson's back as the Director fumbled his gun out of its holster. At a moment's need, Fitz would be happy to reload for Coulson. It might not be necessary. Strange was already flowing forward, a scarlet and black blur of motion with his hands up. Something sparked between the black gloved palms, crisp and bright.

One of the cultists threw a bottle filled with gleaming viscous liquid directly at the Sorcerer Supreme. It wasn't meant to reach him, though – instead it smashed against the concrete and let its horrible contents writhe up in a muddy, gleaming construct of vile goo. Dozens of strands of sticky ichor spun out from its central mass and thrust towards the charging man at blazing speeds.

"By the Hoa _-"_ He cut himself off, busy with a dodge. Tendrils caught only the open air, spiraling against each other to try and find where the sorcerer had jumped to. For a long second, there was no sign of Strange. Then he appeared close to the monstrosity, his face set in furious determination. The light in his hands became a gleaming blue flame and half the slime-beast was gone entirely a second later. Strange cleared his throat as his hands rose once more. The thing was trying to reform, and by his stare he was going to have none of that. " _By the Hoary-Fucking-Hosts of Hoggoth, I banish thee and thy spawn from this realm! Begone and trouble us no more!_ "

Not able to deny that earnest and full-throated mystic dismissal, the rest of the slime-beast fell into smoking ash. The entire fight lasted less than three seconds, the capability of the Sorcerer Supreme shown plain. One of the cultists stepped back, his face slack with shock.

Coulson lowered his gun a handful of inches, more than a little flabbergasted himself. "Is that seriously how the spell goes?"

"I modify the text in certain situations." Strange whirled on the rest of the cultists with an additional snarl. "And who would like to hear what I've got to say next?"

 _"_ _Guys?"_ The speaker on the cellphone crackled into life. Fitz fumbled with it, deciding quickly that he'd be best wrangling information while the Director and the Doctor scared the hell out of the now-retreating band of cultists. _"Who's on the line?"_

"It's me," said Fitz. "Fi-"

 _"_ _I can recognize your voice, kiddo, and maybe you can rock this intel. Maybe not, I dunno. Particle trail's up into Scotland. I just passed Glasgow two minutes ago and we're still hauling a sharp northwest. My map says there's nothing major out there."_

"There's some lochs and suchlike... lots of nature preserves, old estates." He frowned, thinking over a few things. "Drama, right?"

 _"_ _Don't talk to me about drama, kid."_

"Wait, no, not you." Distractedly, he patted at the torso. "Loki and I were talking about drama. Now, Belasco came here to wait out both us and this death-girl, but he did it at the church up the street. The old Hawksmoor church. And-and his cultists were showy and had all this televangelist shouting at their gathering, Loki said. So... there's _got_ to be something out that way. Something flashy enough for his purposes." He racked his brain. He didn't know. It simply wasn't his field.

"Scotland?" Strange shouted the word back to him from near the mouth of the alley. A bullet cracked past him as Coulson warned off one of the remaining enterprising attackers. "Boleskine. He's going to the old Boleskine House, I'll bet you anything. Naturally, it's also along the shores of fabled Loch Ness."

Fitz shrugged at the Director when he turned to share a look. The name clearly meant nothing to him, either. Stark made an odd little _bwuh_ noise into the phone.

"By the neck wattles of a thousand deep-fried cockatrices – Crowley's old home. Aleister Crowley. I've got a whole shelf of his terrible poetry clogging up my house."

Coulson made a face. "I thought he was supposed to be full of crap."

"Oh he was, by my standards," said Strange, striding back down towards them as the last of the cultists peeled off. "Good eye for a land deal, however. And the truth isn't all there is to making reality, even I'll attest to that. Crowley believed he could make a... a door into the supernatural. Belasco can undoubtedly make it real. That's where he's going to bring Shuma-Gorath through." He knelt next to the prone form. "But first, we're going to have to do something about this tricky problem."

. . .

"The pillar doesn't break. The crown is burning fire. Soon, the ravens will come to mock you back into madness. The magpies long since started singing. So what do you do?" _The God of Stories studied the Loki that wouldn't look at certain places in the mist. The places where the ghosts where. By the drawn, dull gleam in the eyes, the Loki who was, in another life of his own, also once Ikol suspected there were now a fair few more ghosts trying to lock eyes with the fallen prince of another story._ "You have to choose your solution."

"Why?" _The snarl was desperate, something young and frightened in it. "_ This isn't my place. I'm not a God."

" _Aren't_ you?"

 _Loki spread his hands, frustrated to the edge of reason. Behind him was the shade of bleeding, coldly dead Frigga and whispering along the edges of the mist was himself, blue and terrified and full of blind fury. At his feet was the fresh, mangled corpse of Coulson. There were other ghosts threatening at the edges, waiting for their turn to regard and judge him. All these old horrors for his eyes alone and he didn't want to see them. All the things he'd done and been and could not erase. Old demons, each carrying his name to curse it._ "I'm not! I jest and sometimes I pretend, but that's not the truth. We are mortal, we live and die. The All-Father took grim pleasure in reminding me of this and so the lesson is taught to me over and over. I rise. And I fall more often than not. There is no throne for me. No crown. If I am a prince, then I am the Prince of Nowhere. I've denied all else."

"But there's a cycle still that binds your 'mortal' Asgard. The Ragnarok chain, the old path of the old gods. And the role of the Father-Deity is often to remind his children of humility. To be the stone in the road, the hermit's challenge. The truth is always more than that, isn't it? Or let me just ask you when you started taking anything _Odin_ said at face-value?" _The wolf-God rolled his eyes with the weight of an old knowing, jutting his elbow into the black pillar to lean hard against it._

 _Loki's pale, thin face reddened sharp at that, finding a jolt of old anger at that hard-driven needle._ "So I should fall into arrogance and pride anew to save my own neck?"

"You are aware that there's this whole big spectrum in the middle, right, Captain Strawman?" _The God of Stories rolled his eyes again hard at who he'd privately started to think of as The God of Drama. Well, it was a consistent enough theme, and not unknown to himself, either._ "You fought to change. You've been engaged in that fight ever since the story started and you never stopped. Because you know story _almost_ as well as I do. You know that stories always have their own value – they're pieces of _life_ given shape and form to teach lessons. Not always good lessons, not bad ones, either. But necessary ones. What have you learned so far from your story?"

"I don't _know." It was almost a wail. In it, denial was drowning._ "I don't have anything."

"Yes, you do. You found something and you let it change you." _The God shoved away from the pillar, upright and bold. In his face was a new, relentless fire._ "The same thing I found. The last piece of the puzzle." _He walked towards the other Loki, deciding that, drama or no, fear or denial or whatever else, he'd committed to helping this one see what should be clear._ "You have friends. Like I do – I've at least one. I think you've somehow got me beat on that."

"Frie-" _Loki stepped back, stunned. That word. That damnable, haunting word._

 _He let his voice become a poet's chant, the words still fresh in his mind._ "I have a friend who believes in me. I have a brother whom I love." _Again, the other Loki recoiled away from him, as if stabbed. The God of Stories reached out and grabbed the slender arm, forcing him to listen. To hear the truth in words that had formed countless stories before and since._ "I am my own, and I will not-

"-Sit long in any box built for me." _Shock passed across the other pale face, realization, sorrow, comprehension. The start of acceptance. Not a hero's journey, but one that must be made regardless._ "These things are right."

"These things we'll keep."

"As for the rest... we'll tell a _different_ story."

 _The shaggy, wild god grinned through the green mist at the other Loki, his own features going from man to wolf to woman to fox until there were only the words and the choice between them._ "Let's be something new."

 _Loki put one hand on the black pillar. His face was still stunned, marked by something he could never describe. Something more than change, something deeper than the narrow hopes he'd found to cling to in the past._ "You said the pillar cannot be broken."

"I say a lot of things. Some of them are even true."

 _His other hand came up to press its palm against the cold obsidian and he thought for his own soul alone._ Coulson. Fitz. Skye. May, though she grudges, she also stands. Simmons, wherever she may be. Triplett, lost to ash.

Thor. Ah, Gods. Gods _damn_ it all.

 _His face creased, accepting the old and hidden truth at last._ There is no Thor without Loki, the steadfast and the changeling. There is no _me_ without the other. The paradox endures. That's the story. Where it ends, that's what I have to figure out. But first I need to get back. They will need help, even Strange... and I think they might be worried for me. _That too was still a new thought to him. The old hours of avoiding it coming home to a heavy roost. He accepted it at last. All of it. They worried, where others might never. That held an impossible value to him. Something that could not be shaken._

 _In the grey of his thoughts, there was at last an answer to a question. THE question._

 _Who was he?_

 _He knew he had his answer at last. In truth and in lie it was the only answer possible. He was Loki. The words_ I Am _were forever the borders of his spirit, and within that private land was_ change _. Such was his territory, to hold and command._

 _The pillar might not break. But the circumstances... they could be altered. Now that he understood the roots of that power, he could force it. He swallowed hard, trying to bring all that he now believed down into himself to keep and to hold fast, and he gave the pillar a mighty shove._

 _It shifted aside with ease at his touch, the burning crown of horns clattering to the misty ground to be forgotten. No, it did not break – but it could move, and that was enough. Light spilled out of the revealed portal beneath. He took a shuddery inhale and froze when the black-nailed hand touched his arm._ "What?"

"Eh. Just wanted to say good luck." _The God of Stories shrugged._ "I expect I'll see you again in just a bit. Got a few things left to tell you at a better time." _The hand left his arm, pointing at the portal._ "Go crash the party before you get rescued. The look on your friends' faces will be worth what the passage will do to you."

"Rescu- _I could have skipped all this?!"_

"It'll be better this way, trust me. The Vishanti are kind of twitchy sometimes. They like to forget they owe favors, or pull the whole 'he who helps himself' nonsense. Gods, but I hate that." _The God of Stories grinned at the other man. Where the next road ended, neither of them knew yet._ "Change or die, Loki."

 _He stepped towards the portal, ready to drop through and wake himself up. To keep his choices, finding a way to be something new, however small. Even small gods had power that could not be denied._ "Change, of course. It's what I have to be." _His face quirked, bitterly amused at the joke contained within._ "Somewhere out there, there _must_ be a version of me that's healthy and well-balanced."

 _The sardonic snort cut through the green mist._ "Hah, no. I took a census. We're _all_ bastards."

 _Trapped by the sudden absurdity of the place they stood in and the roles they filled, the God of Stories and the God of Change locked eyes and started to laugh._


	20. Awakening

20\. Awakening

. . .

 _Loch Ness, The Boleskine House, Scotland_

Death was on display in the modified basement cell, the basement itself a newer addition to the old manor's structure. The cell was a central open space barred on all sides from floor to ceiling, with only a narrow few bound together into a makeshift but durable door. The iron bars were set close to one another but she could slip her small, young-looking hand through to touch the free air. Her watchers were smarter than to risk her contact, however, and kept well out of arm's reach.

Instead they took turns sitting around her in a circle, nineteen points in an erratic star to keep Death contained in ways both physical and magical. So she sat as well, in a calm, cross-legged position in the heart of her cage, staring them in the eye when they chanced to lift their faces. She knew the name of every one, and when they looked into her serene face, they knew she knew. None looked back for long. None cared to see the judgment written there.

There was a single thin window set in the top of a wall and through it she could see the light of the sky turn soft and orange – the hour of the gloaming, rolling warmly over the Highlands. Twilight, and that hour as sacred to her on any world as the dark time before the dawn. She allowed herself to watch the sky richen and turn to evening's purple, and still she heard the heavy footsteps of Belasco as he approached. His voice was hot steel. "You must be livid, my Lady."

"Do not call me that," said the girl in her soft English lilt, the chill underneath giving each consonant the taste of frost. "You've no right, and the words sound wrong from you. Thief."

" _Escapee._ It sounds better." By the sound of his words, he was drawing closer to the cell. Too close, for mortal's care. "Are your accommodations satisfactory?"

She did not answer.

"I can't hear you, Death. Can anyone?"

She spun up from her seat as quick as a cat, her brown arm and hand flicking out to catch empty air as he danced back and away from the cage. "Why are you so afraid, Belasco? Take my hand." She stretched her palm out to him, again as serene as if she'd never moved. "You do fear me. You hold me here, but you know you do not yet hold all of me." She smiled into his eyes, the expression cooly regal. "As we speak, I am watching the last star explode in a galaxy that I long since swept into my domain, its light guttering out into the blackness of the anomaly that killed it. I am holding a day-old child whose lungs cannot keep the air. I am standing above continents and kings and Gods and in the end they all know my name. I am here, but I am also everywhere."

"For now. For now, you are bound in young flesh by old rules, trapped by your own whimsies. And I am well-warded in my place of power. Even if you should touch me, you cannot touch me. My will makes that so." Belasco smiled back at her, but he did not drift close to her grasp again. He stayed several meters away. Beyond him, the keepers of the nineteen-pointed star were on their knees, faces pressed into the hard earth of the basement to honor their terrifying leader. "And who is afraid? You fled here, took this fragile little shell for your own shaping. I know what and whom you run from. Isn't my solution the better one, really?"

She snorted at him, nostrils flaring in disgust. "You misunderstand me, as so many do."

"Educate me." He stretched his own hand out, the expression on his mad face contorting into an insulting attempt to humor her. "What did you hope to accomplish here, in this child's form?"

"You could never understand."

"Would _he_? The sorcerer you tried to call out to. Did you mean to warn him and buy yourself some more strength to stand against me? Is that how you knew I was close? Bit weak a man, in my educated opinion. Barely as interesting as that old fool, Strange. Your broken friend was all flash and fire, but no ice for the lasting." He grinned, his teeth white and sharp, looking for a reaction in her that didn't come. "Trapped and gone, like all my other challengers. If you can indeed still commit your duty from here, do let me know when his soul-tether weakens and snaps. It is inevitable. There are few ways to save someone from that fate, and only I hold the Key to the door I threw him through."

Death studied his face, silent.

"Tell me, will you grieve for that withering soul?" He leaned forward, approaching the dangerous fringe of her touch. He was still grinning, the soft corners of his lips all but tearing in his hateful delight. "Are you even capable of such things, you thin little wraith? Do you care for any of us when we pass through your realm? I know you spared me not a thought as I fell and burned, my own broken star in the black of your night. Your face did not turn to see me. I _remember_. Have you nothing except for the nothingness you give?"

She turned away from his purple, florid words in a dismissal, her spine straight and noble. She did not react when he took a risk and slapped at the bars of her cage. "Tonight, lady Death. In the dark heart of the eve, in the hours before your legends are strongest. We'll see an end to this tonight, and in that, a new beginning. A new and stranger aeon, incomparable to all that came before."

Salima listened to him go, the nineteen wards resuming a soft murmur that was intended to mask both her and the power building underneath the manor and its nearby terrain. When the door at the top of the stairs slammed shut again, she whispered for her own ears, _"I wasn't running."_

 _. . ._

Fitz stayed by Loki's side, studying Doctor Strange as he hovered above the alley street in a mystic trance. The Doctor's arms were akimbo, moving gently in fluid patterns and his face was turned to the sky with his features locked into deep concentration. Around him, the great red cloak shifted in the air like a bizarre cocoon. He was in communion with the Vishanti, or so he claimed that was his goal before beginning his ritual. From time to time the black brows furrowed together, as if struggling through an argument. Fitz thought it didn't look like he was winning, and he tried to ignore the worm of fear burrowing through his guts.

Across from Fitz sat Coulson, who rubbed at his forehead while staring down at the phone laid on one of his thighs. The screen of it was filling with data and geological imaging from Stark as he remained in an observation holding pattern a few miles out from the Boleskine place. Nothing about it looked good. There'd clearly been some new additions since Belasco grabbed the place in the last decade or so. A basement, and a handful of tunnels leading to the nearby graveyard. That went over well with everyone, particularly the doctor who muttered something about _meddling in domains not meant for mortal man_ and a few other florid opinions. Base was running tactical options, most of which involved getting moving and into position while the going was good, but still they held firm. They waited instead.

None of them intended to leave Loki until they had to. It was unspoken, but clear. Fitz's hand squeezed Loki's shoulder now and again, unable to think of anything else to do to help.

He started a little, rocking back on his heels when the Doctor dropped gently to the ground and came to Loki. The man's eyes were open but unseeing, a filmy iridescent sheen over them as he passed a hand over the fallen agent's face without touching. "I don't understand," whispered the sorcerer from somewhere far away within himself. "They-"

Loki's bone-white hand snapped up and grabbed Strange's arm around the wrist, pushing it away from his face with less force than he might have used in another time. Fitz gasped, startling Coulson into attention as closed eyes winced and then began to flicker open. Loki squinted against the fading light. "Gods," he whispered. The sound of his voice was rusty and disused, as if he'd been gone for a great deal longer than they knew.

Strange pulled back from the prone form. With a single blink, his eyes refocused back to the here and now and he looked down at Loki, openly startled. "I don't understand," he said again. "The Vishanti denied me outright. Said this was not their hour. How, then?"

Loki shifted on the ground, muttering under his breath. He coughed twice, then tried to pull an elbow under himself to get upright. His body wasn't fully his own again yet, his legs fighting him with rubbery muscles. On instinct, Fitz reached out to help and, to his surprise, found that his assistance was taken without argument. Together they got him seated again. A pale palm passed across his own face, which was unreadable even as Coulson leaned in to check him worriedly. A bit to his own bemusement, Loki's other hand gently waved him off as if to say _I'm fine, stop your fretting._

Strange was still stunned, his cloak pulling in close around him. "How? What God comes to your aid if mine own pantheon won't?"

"Same as forever, Strange. The only God I can ever seem to rely on." came the hoarse voice. Finally the sharp eyes flickered up to regard him. They were the same, and yet the doctor took another step back, seeing something else begin to kindle there in the depths of the green. Something a shade brighter. " _Myself._ "

"Loki?" Coulson fumbled with the phone, sharing a glance with Fitz. They didn't see what Strange could, but there was something else in the tone.

"Yes." The thin, familiar smile. "Only me." He turned to Coulson, marking the worry still plain there. The smile evened out, becoming grim. "I note evening draws close. What's the situation become while you all sat here fretting at me?"

"Well, Belasco grabbed our mutual bestie Miss Death out of the hospital up the street and booked it up into Scotland. Stark's been monitoring the scene and it looks not so good." Coulson added a few more details to round out his quick brief, Fitz interjecting with what he personally saw. Strange folded his arms against himself, his face tight.

"So, everything is freshly terrible and we're ticking down the seconds to dread horror. I suppose it was too much to hope for that I might wake up to kittens and pleasant sunshine instead." Loki shrugged with benign resignation, looking up at the the doctor. "Now, tell me something new. Preferably like how you're going to get us close to this manor in short order _sans_ terrible tiny English cars with no damned legroom."

"I can tell you, or I can merely proceed to getting ready to do it. I think that might be preferable, considering." Strange lifted an eyebrow as Loki struggled to his feet without the need for further help. "You have something more?"

"I suppose I might." With his back to Strange so that he could regard the two SHIELD agents, Loki gave a dry but honest smile. One that seemed young and awkward on the thin face. "Thank you. For worrying." He stopped, silent for a moment while he mustered the rest. It was clear that it was not easy for him as his voice remained sharp gravel. "And for not leaving me there on the ground when you really ought to have."

Coulson's face said he was having a hard time absorbing the rare moment of open sincerity. "So... when we get back, we're having you scanned for deep brain damage right away."

Loki lifted a single finger to prove that Strange was not the only surprising figure among them to know a popular human gesture. _That,_ at least, seemed much more fitting to his nature and proved out the returning of his health.

Then Strange's red cloak stretched to fill the alley and they were gone with a blink from the clasp's strange golden eye.


	21. No Damsels

21\. No Damsels

. . .

Stark watched the tracker dots change on his suit's complex HUD, three SHIELD agents and the doctor as a stringer from the weird part of the organization's directory suddenly departing London only to be re-acquired a second later by Friday. Now the bonkers barbershop quartet was somewhere amidst fields and moor just southeast of the Boleskine place. He targeted the location with a lifted eyebrow and decided he didn't need to be asked before setting course, kicking at the sky to set his trajectory.

Static crackled in his ear a moment later, Coulson's voice sounding hugely less stressed while, somehow, just as stressed in a different way. " _Stark?"_

"Already moseying on my way over, Phil-baby. How's the god of comas?"

 _"_ _Mouthy, weird, and about as much of a pain in the ass as ever."_

"You must be relieved, Phil. You were so worried. Does he know you were all worried? I even heard that Skye lady shrieking on the line earlier. It's very cute, the way you just adopt these people. I bet you tell them dad jokes. Are we doing a get-well card? Because I'll sign, just for the hell of it." Stark grinned at the HUD as he flew, listening to the sounds of annoyance fill the line. "Be there in just a sec, kids."

. . .

The hour of twilight passed and became full night. Death looked up at what few flickering stars she could see from her cage and took a soft inhale. She was everywhere, this was the truth. She knew the fluctuations, the ebb and flow of life. The patterns could not be hidden from her, not even in the dark place where she was held, and she smiled with grim certainty when she saw certain ones begin to change and reform close by.

Around the cage, the nineteen wards continued their monotonous chant. To a person, they could no longer look at her. They held firm in the belief that she could not escape and could do nothing from within that place of binding. Both the sound of their ritual and that blinding belief would hide her own actions. They were not as wise as they believed.

She rose silently to her feet, her eyes keeping watch on the nineteen surrounding her to ensure none found some new bravery. Then she put a hand on the inside of the cage door, knowing that Belasco was already at the altar, busy with his preparations. Likely in communion with the vile thing that drove him.

Death had stolen many books in Her time, as her brief allies among the mortals knew. One, Loki, also knew that she'd learned a fair few mortal tricks to put to her use when incarnate and so, some slight fraction more vulnerable. Minor illusions and other things that suited her chosen nature. She was long since prepared for such foolishness on the part of would-be conquerers. She did not care for rudeness and disrespect, but she admired mortal curiosity and thus chose to cultivate it in herself as a whimsy that was also a tool.

With her palm pressed against the thick block of steel that served as the lock to her cage, she whispered a faint string of arcane words that both Loki and Strange would recognize immediately. The lock snapped open, the clinking sound of it muted by her hand, the easy spell, and the soft murmuring of the cultists, and so it was that she let herself out to go and do her part in stopping the old fool, Belasco. Not one looked up to see her as she whispered by through the shadows that filled the basement prison, but one shivered, as if suddenly cold to the bone. She could have taken all nineteen then with a cold whisper on the wind, but she felt that was not quite her place. They were fools, doing a fool's bidding. Let them scatter, afraid.

Now, Belasco. That one was _hers_ to take again and no other's. He made it personal, made dalliance with the eldritch God-beast she long ago shamed into submission. She intended to see them both repaid in kind.

. . .

"What's the plan, sports fans?" Stark sat down with a thump on a rock that jutted up out of the wet ground of the moor, looking at the pool of muck that swamped around his feet. "That's going to need a power-hose," he muttered to himself inside his helmet.

Coulson jutted a chin at Stark, his hand jammed in his suit pocket. Being lighter, he wasn't having the same issue as the man in the metal suit. His toes _were_ getting kind of cold and damp, though. "Gut instinct says we roll in hot and start hitting Belasco in the face to keep him from getting the ritual started. Gut instinct, while awesome and emotionally satisfying, is probably not our best plan."

Strange kept his tall form hovering above the damp moor, with Fitz looking up at him with an expression that suggested he felt the doctor was using a cheat code. The scientist was fiddling with checking the safeties on a couple of spare firearms, one of which he shoved into his belt with a wince. Another was tossed to Loki, who examined it with an expression that indicated he wouldn't be using it while Strange talked. "It's also far too late by my reckoning. Now that we're close, I can tell you the ritual has been slowly building for quite some time, the scars of it cutting deep through all the gathered power in this region to bind it all into this bleak spell. What we approach tonight is the apex, the final call to Belasco's chosen God. It will not be so simple to disrupt, I'm afraid."

"We can still hit Belasco in the face," offered Loki cheerily, seemingly unaffected by the chill in the nighttime Scottish air. His lips and teeth pulled into an echo of the old jackal's smile. "I have absolutely no qualms with this option. In fact, I _volunteer_."

"Holding a bit of a grudge, Loki of Asgard?"

Loki eyed the hovering sorcerer and his sardonic expression, that new gleam still bright in his face. "Can you blame me?"

The red cloak flowed and followed the doctor in a shrug. "Not really. If you get a chance, hit him in the face all you like. Let's prioritize first, however." He lifted a hand to demonstrate. "The prophecy's needs are our targets. Rescue Death, acquire the Key, and ensure the Door does not fully open. That is likely our best order – without Death in Belasco's grasp, it may be Shuma-Gorath's interest will wane. Not likely, but... At the very _least_ , we may avoid the worst possible outcome."

Fitz lifted a finger. "And may I add, Loki and I discussed that situation, and avoiding it sounds _really good_ to me." Coulson lifted an eyebrow at him in an unspoken question. "You don't want to know, sir."

"You truly don't." Loki settled himself against Stark's rock for lack of any other option on the broad moor. "I support Strange's priority, though I must add I think it will be fairly easy to secure the la-" He cut himself off as the figure of a young woman came up over a nearby ridge and into their view.

Her words carried ahead of her as she approached. "Or I will damned well take care of myself, Loki of Asgard. I like to think you might have suspected that possibility." Death smiled, thin and wry in a light brown face that was both young and terrifyingly ancient all at once. Her hands were stuffed into the pockets of the old jeans she wore. Like Loki, she seemed untroubled by the cold air. "This is not the City and its guards. I can handle one old egotistical fool and his confused minions, given a little time to get my feet back under me. Belasco himself is mine and none of yours. This is aged business done at last, a ledger to be balanced out and closed." She took a hand out of her pocket to gesture languidly at the group of men. "That said, it _is_ charming to see all of you again."

 _All of you._ Fitz swallowed hard, not sure how to take that. The dark gold eyes flickered to his and he couldn't help but shiver, despite the friendly, old smile. Out of the corner of his eye, he could swear he saw Strange twitch a little as well. Neither Coulson nor Loki looked so much as startled by this arrival, however. Stark was unreadable inside his suit, but to make himself feel better, Fitz decided to believe that the Avenger probably peed a little.

"Don't fret. Today again we are allies, and you do not need to fear me overmuch." She inclined her head politely before turning to Coulson. "The Key is in the hands of Belasco himself. The rest will follow naturally if we are fortunate, but I must advise you – his madness begins to crescendo, echoed by the long dark where even I do not walk save when I must. There are matters in play that may must come to an ending and a sealing. We do not leave here without battle, I'm afraid... and I am here. I cannot tell you the night's outcome, it is too mutable and I do not know it." She looked to Loki when she said that, bringing a contemplative expression to his face.

Stark lifted a red-alloyed hand to get everyone's attention. "Okay. So it doesn't sound like we need to get all Patton on this. Less talky more punchy? I've got the entire area mapped, all we really need to do is pick our route to go start messing up this guy's eldritch rock gig."

"Belasco will be in the graveyard close. It's the nexus he's made, a knot of power between life and death, chaos and order. Miss, may I advise you remain behind in case of-"

Death lifted a brow in annoyance, the expression curt enough to cut Strange off. "Spare me, ward of the Vishanti. I found that unnecessary chivalry grew old before the birth of this galaxy's star. I was taken, yes, a terribly minor misstep on my part. Do not compound it by _fawning_ at me."

Strange's face pinched further when he realized Loki was smirking at him from just outside of Death's view. "Of course, my la- Er." He shook his head, realizing her expression wasn't getting any cheerier with that choice of words, either. "Right," he said, giving up. "Gut instinct rules the night. All out assault on a bunch of cultists and their leader, and may Chaos favor the invading team."

Stark hoisted up from the rock, thrusters starting to warm back up at the snap of his hands. "Go big or go home."

. . .

Belasco turned to watch his people as they knelt among the mossy stones, throats full of the low, wavering hum in the arcane tonal mix he'd taught them. He could be proud, and he was, though not of them. Proud of the culmination of a life's work. Proud of his plan come to fruition at last. That eve, he would behold Shuma-Gorath Itself, and be ascended to continue to the dark work. Forever.

There was no greater fate. No greater _revenge_ for his dead world and his dead soul.

He turned back to examine the rough slab of old marble, a relic kept safe for centuries while he did the delicate work of layering countless spells and runes within it. The seals and the containers, and in the center of all this a hole waiting for its key.

With Death's mortal host strapped to its surface, she would be unable to resist the damage the Key would do to her. She would be locked out, severed from the plane they currently shared. The rest of the runes would ensure she was fed to great unholy Shuma-Gorath where It pressed on the other side of the Door. Between the two, the door would not merely crack – he could do that right now by the grace of his ancient Key and touch Its slithering face when It pressed close. With the gift of Death's spirit, the Door would be blown open, with no corner of this universe untouched by its eternal corruption and ceaselessly spreading flesh.

He ignored the rustling of one of his cultists at first, the man stampeding his way through the graveyard towards him like a bull. Then his nostrils flared, smelling fear. He looked over his shoulder, his gaze freezing the man solid. Now he marked him – one of the basement wards, young and terrified to his mortal core. He knew instantly what that meant. "Fool..."

"She's gone, great Guide! I don't know how. The others have fled." His mouth opened, agape as Belasco began to hover over him. The thrumming sound of the rest of the cultists filled the graveyard. Yes, power here. Power enough to spare in quick punishment. He lifted a hand, watching new fear began to boil through the young man's face. "Please, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm-"

Belasco obliterated him with a wave, letting the fury begin to curdle and overflow within him. Thousands of years of work, at risk because these children that worshipped him and his God could not keep another child locked safely away for mere hours.

On the other side of the field between the cemetery and the manor, he heard a scream of fright that was not at all his doing. He sneered, his fine old eyes picking out the sudden swoop into the air of the infamous man in the metal suit. The night sky lit up with a blaze of light from the machine palm, and in the afterglow he saw a handful of his cultists running in terror. "He's not trying to kill you!" he howled across the fields, pouring his magic into the shout to be sure they heard him. "These Avengers kill only if they must. But _I_ will end all of you, if you do not delay him!"

They kept running as the man, that Stark, shot up to course back down in a sonic boom strong enough to drown out even his commands. It echoed across the land, earning responding hoots of offense from nesting cormorants at the edge of the loch.

Fear was a teacher, a way to bind student to master. But they were more afraid of the metal man now than he, teaching him the fleeting worth of that relationship – and rising next into the air above Boleskine's land was the red cloak of the Vishanti's newest Sorcerer Supreme. The man was chanting his own quick magics, the gloved hands firing alight in spirals and patterns designed to hasten the scattering of _his_ pets. Belasco snarled in fresh rage and made a decision, turning back to the altar to begin the first phase of the Great Work early.

 _She_ would still be close. If his great God would agree to heed his cry, then the mishap come to pass could be recovered from. By Its mercy and will.

Belasco might be abruptly losing his grip on the scattering cult. But no one could run from the a glimpse of Shuma-Gorath, even in Its first and minor incarnation. Not even Death.

He took the Key from his pocket and plunged it into its place in the altar with a scream into the darkness beyond darkness, imploring his God to take pity and to slither Its first great tentacle through the crack that was already beginning to form between the planes. Emerge in Its first form, to teach humility and to ensure the rest of their future might come.

At first there was silence.

Then the low shudder of a sound below mortal hearing, a sound that instinctively brought illness and imbalance, frightening a listener into primal horror. Within that inhuman rumble, Belasco heard another sound, a sonic shudder that began underneath the sludge of the nearby loch, and his teeth bared in wild delight at the midnight sky.

God was coming.


	22. In the End were the Words

22\. In the End were the Words

. . .

 _The eels that burrow into the muck at the black bottom of Loch Ness are the first to know that something has gone wrong in nature's kingdom. They boil forth from their resting places and shoot through the murky water, fleeing the thing birthing itself in their wake. They plunge past the mindless schools of char and trout, slamming bodily into small knots of the stickleback fish as they continue running, running from something their tiny amphibious minds could never comprehend. In desperation they writhe onto the wet shores of the loch, preferring to die on land than face what squirms below._

 _The next to suffer are the fishes themselves, poisoned instantly by the vile eye as It peels open to behold Its brief womb and the parasites drifting close to It. Gases filter to the surface of the water and pop, released by thousands of dead and dying things, freshly rotting algae, weeds and muck going toxic rather than share space with the atrocity that is now spreading to push itself away from the bottom of once infamous Loch Ness._

 _It does not need a mouth to roar. The trembling rush of Its tentacles unfurling from its central mass creates all the birthing cry It desires, and It breaks the surface of the loch to behold the night sky and its living stars. As if the universe itself would rather go blind than to stare back into horror's blackened eye, clouds began to gather and veil the night from Its impossible stare. The moon itself dips out of sight behind these, its silver gleam going dull against the haze of the impossible birthing God._

 _A tentacle as thick as a small car slams onto the wet earth, sending a cracking shockwave through the nearby territories so strong that the British Geological Survey later notes a 1.4 magnitude tremor in a region without a known faultline. And then another tentacle rises and plummets to earth with another shudder. Soon there are nearly a dozen sickly iridescent ropes of flesh and thin suckers tugging at the now-tainted soil, pulling the central mass of the God of Corruption the rest of the way out of the water as It rises to coil above the shimmering surface._

 _The cry of Its chosen creature, sweet Belasco, fills its mind. The Belasco is close, and its plea so hungry. Under it, Shuma-Gorath can smell Her, too close to the fray to avoid Its pull. The monstrous eye and Its maddening iris locus wide to challenge the sky and Its ropey tentacles spin again to press underneath It in a mockery of motion. It will come to Belasco. It will come to her._

 _With a shudder through the breaking earth, Shuma-Gorath plunges towards the chaos at Boleskine Manor, Its suckers feeding on whatever It desires._

. . .

Fitz followed close behind both the running Loki and Death, who seemed to have other ideas in mind while Strange and Stark rousted the first line of cultists. Coulson was staying high and behind at first, providing coverage from his vantage point at the far edges of the Manor. It was his swearing into the crackling speaker connection that first told Fitz something new was going wrong, followed by a grotesque shudder through the land close by. He tugged the phone from its belt clip, trying to make out what the director was saying. "Sir?"

 _"_ _Shuma-Gorath is emerging. Don't look at the western sky. It's literally the worst thing I've ever seen. Can't use binoculars anymore, Fitz. If I see that thing's eyeball again, I'm gonna be on mental health leave for a month or five. Rest is survivable, if incredibly gross, but avoid looking into the eye."_ A busy rustle. _"Dropping down to get a mid-range view of the scene instead. Warn Loki for me. It's coming in fast and headed right for the cemetery."_

The rumble began again, this time closer. Dawning horror rippled down Fitz's spine as he quickly mentally calculated the sheer size of the thing. "Loki!"

"I know! Strange _helpfully_ dumped all his observations straight into my mind. It's emerging early to take command of the situation. Belasco must have grown impatient and cracked his ridiculous Door open." Loki stopped his charge when Death did. The cemetery was close and here they were going to have to take a slight amount of caution. He looked down at her, watching furious determination cloud the young eyes. The incongruity of her chosen form regardless, the look on Death's face meant it would be wiser to defer. "Plan?"

Her response was curt. "I take and keep Belasco, to a duty done. Don't worry about us. Help rout the cultists away from the center so we need not fret about them. Get the Key if you can when he's gone, you're likely going to need it for _It._ Damnable thing's not meant for my hands." She whirled to regard Fitz. "You come with me."

Fitz's eyes widened nearly to the point of hurting when she reached out to tug at the front of his shirt for emphasis. "Do-do I have to?"

"Strange is a skittish fledgling around me but pretends he's otherwise. You're outright frightened. That is better. I appreciate the honesty. _You_ can watch my back to be sure I make no further small mistakes today. I've another idea as well, if you're willing." She whirled away again and started running down into the cemetery without waiting to be sure he followed.

Fitz stared blankly up into Loki's grinning face, seeing the green eyes full of humor and something else that was like a soft glow. For whatever reason, Fitz felt a little less afraid. Certainly Loki wasn't. "That's a direct order from Death Herself," said Loki, not unkindly. "Best get caught up."

He opened his mouth to say something, but didn't know what could possibly be said to that. Instead, he bobbed his head in bewildered agreement and took off after the young woman. He did not see Loki fade smoothly into the shadows as he began to take a different route along the fringe of the cemetery.

Below, a handful of the braver faithful close to the pair's emergence began to crack and run when snapped old growth became a boiling nest of snakes. Not one of the fleeing cultists saw the grinning jackal at the treeline as he ended the illusion with a snap of his fingers. He moved on, sowing chaos where he passed.

. . .

In the thrum of the earth, the approach of his long-awaited God. Belasco's smile was wider than ever, thin trails of drying blood at the corners of his mouth and his blazing eyes full of the memory of Shuma-Gorath's hideous glory. So close now. All would be well, and all would forever be well. He reached out and pulled the Promethium Key smoothly back out of the altar, knowing the Door was cracked open enough to never shut on its own. So long as Shuma was here, so long as _he_ held the Key, their future was prepared. He welcomed it with a gleeful heart.

With the Key in his hand, he turned to look one more time at the chaos still growing throughout the manor. Now that mattered little. It was odd, however, that the sorcerer and the fool in the tin can would not bother to approach him and his cemetery ritual. His eyes narrowed, considering that. As he did so, the smell of the frightened young man reached his nostrils. The same one from London, too meager for him to even bother with. Did the mundane human allies think they could handle _him?_ Sent the powerless child who could not even save that other weak sorcerer?

Belasco turned slowly to look at Fitz, the young man's pale hands holding a gun on him. Fitz's eyes were wide and frightened under a sweaty mop of curling hair, but his hands did not shake around the black pistol grip. One finger was tight against the trigger. Belasco smiled, nothing human in it. "Your weapons won't do anything to me, boy. Fire your full clip if you like. All it will do is ensure you die a little quicker. It-"

Fitz unloaded the gun on him, wincing slightly at the recoil battering through his arms at the continuous fire. No icer charges – he'd swapped to live ammunition for the extra punch. Belasco staggered back a handful of steps, unharmed but startled into new, increasingly mindless fury. "You _dared?"_ he hissed, stunned by the brat's unwelcome attempts at bravado.

"Your idea," said Fitz in a voice that was far too calm, his glassy, staring gaze meaning he was fighting to keep tight control on his fear. He slammed in another clip as fast as he could with fumbling hands and a furious mage just meters away, then unloaded on Belasco again without hesitation. All the bullets speckling in the center of mass, no finesse, just short-range going for what worked. Belasco went back another step, starting to laugh in wild outrage. Fitz couldn't seem to care. The world was in slow motion for him and his own voice seemed twee and far away. "That set's for what you did to Loki. Hope it at least stings, you fantasy novel reject." He lowered the gun, waiting to see what Belasco would do.

"You should run now, you _worm,"_ snarled Belasco, fully, utterly concentrated on the young man. There was only the human, and the rising fire. There was nothing else. He pulled everything to him to prepare a swift and unstoppable revenge, focusing his all on a spear of rage that would incinerate the boy where he still stood, immobile. The last wisp of soul he would tear apart with the Key still waiting in his hand.

Before he could move, a touch drifted across his face, a hand coming up from behind him in a graceful gesture to trace a single finger along the high bone of his cheek. "Like _you_ did? Like you think I do now?" The soft English lilt held bitter sarcasm. "Your concentration fails you, Belasco, you forget the wards you made around yourself, and now I am here. This mortal you decry is your downfall after all."

Belasco fell to his knees, his face freezing as the air left his lungs. He reached out to Fitz, fingers knotting and gnarling in senseless fury as his magic tried to save him and instead poured away into nothingness. There was nothing _to_ save. Only a shade that should have been long dead.

"Don't look." Fitz locked eyes with Death over the dying sorcerer's shoulder, where she now stood with her palms pressing together like some unknown prayer. Her voice was oddly gentle. "Belasco has been running from me for a long time. His decay is becoming revealed for the world to see. _Don't look."_

He turned away, squeezing his eyes shut as the sounds of desiccation and the whisper of old sand began. Things fell apart inside the dead man, scraping against each other within the rustle of rotting fabric. A smell reached him, the heavy, meaty odors of liquefaction and something fouler than foul. He gagged, stepping away a few more feet, but there was no getting away from it. All he could hope for was the soft breeze cutting through the cemetery might pull it away soon.

Then he opened them again when the sound of something massive crashed through the nearby trees. Forgetting Coulson's warning, he looked up to see a tentacle cutting through the night's sky, the edges of it lined blacker than black against the clouds. It hovered high above them. Thin suckers flexed along the bottom of it, each one a different size, a different display of grotesque flickering iridescence. Then, worst of all, the words came _._ Fitz clutched at both sides of his head as a rush of agony swept through his mind, realizing through bleary eyes that even Death Herself was forced to do the same by the sheer power of Its presence. Her teeth were bared in pain equal to his.

Together they fell to their knees at the arrival of Shuma-Gorath.

 _. . ._

 _It does not truly speak, It does not need to. The intent of Its desire and the sounds of corruption themselves force their way through nearby minds, shuddering and cutting through all other thoughts. Each bleak sound tastes of atrocity. In the impossible thrum of Its secret dialogue is covetousness and hate. The ears of the unprepared cultists, those whom It might feed upon first among this insect crowd, begin to bleed as small ruptures spark through their brains. Some of the weaker ones fall to their knees on the edge of death, already lost within Its most secret whispers._

 _But It wants more. It wants everything._

. . .

In the wake of the assault on both mind and eye, there was a brief, unnatural silence. Then even that was shattered as a single thick, rope-like tentacle started to cut relentlessly through the air down towards the altar and the pair still standing there.


	23. Flying Tackle

23\. Flying Tackle

. . .

Loki moved near-invisibly across a high ridge along the southern side of the cemetery, having prepared a handful of improvisational wards that would allow him to track and handle the Key now that it was an active artifact. As Death implied, the item was now alive with power and dangerous in the hands of the unprepared. It was still difficult to focus on the item; the Key's trail had been masked by Belasco's own wild power and was now far too close to the thing's terrifying presence. If someone or _something_ got the Key before he did... He grit his teeth at the possibility, knowing full well the Key's awoken power could mean a far worse outcome for its next victim than what he'd faced.

Strange kept him updated through sorcerous whispers, ensuring that paths were clear and chaos was thoroughly sown among the crowd inhabiting the manor. He himself was ready to move in and get his own magics on the Key as soon as Death kept her promise, but even he didn't expect how quickly the shifting mass of the corrupted god spun towards the battlefield and what It desired most. The monstrous thing hurt to look at, and he too stumbled for a moment when Its silent roar cut through the night. Not even he could block Its words, but he had enough distance between himself and It to recover quickly.

Through a flicker of the trees as he ran, he saw both Fitz and Death still frozen directly in the killing path. He sped up as suckers flexed in mid-air, prepared for the plunge, but he knew instantly what he was looking at. A thousand years of instincts knew, and though he could bring change, _miracle_ was not his place.

 _I'm not going to get there in time!_

Still, he moved towards them anyway. Somewhere else in him was the faith he'd only just begun to recognize – Death, Herself no fool, and his young friend smart and quick enough to still have a chance. He took a deep breath and hung onto hope.

 _Move your arse, Fitz!_

. . .

Not thinking, knowing deep down neither one of them could possibly be fast enough in their human bodies to dodge what was coming, Fitz lunged for Death across the rotting pile that had once been the body of Belasco. She saw him coming, barely sparing a quick glance up at the doom intended for them both.

Instead of tackling a startled figure to safety, Fitz thudded into someone ready for it. No, neither alone would survive – but together, with a shove up and away from her legs, she added enough of her own momentum to propel them both just shy of the tentacle. Where they stood was cratered deep into the ground a split second later, the attack slapping apart what remained of the dead sorcerer and shattering the ancient marble slab into flying shards. Several cut across Fitz's arms and back and he hissed as they slammed into the ground in pain. "Learn _that_ tactic from a stolen book?" he asked after he gasped for air, more than a little stunned and a lot more startled that he wasn't dead.

"Girl's football league. Before I got sick," said Death in an even tone of voice, as if that was supposed to make perfect sense. There was a cut high on her forehead, a thin one that oozed a line of shiny red blood. He didn't know why it surprised him so much that she bled like a human. "Wing-back."

"Uh. Right." He scrambled up, not wanting to look back as the sound of the tentacle arm starting to shudder afresh. Something occurred to him and he whirled despite himself to scan the ground where the sorcerer had been. "The K-" he started to say, stopping when she grabbed at his bleeding arm and started to haul him away from the approaching central mass of Shuma-Gorath.

"Can't. It's going to strike again, and not just for us! Loki will find it!" She froze when another tentacle, this one twice as thick as the other, slammed down to cut off the path she'd chosen. Not stopping, she went for an angle instead, looking for a way out. More tentacles thudded down behind them, at least one coming close enough to rattle their legs nearly out from under them. The huge form of the emergent God, still only a fragment of Its true shape and power, continued to flatten and destroy everything it coursed over.

Then light filled the clouded sky, a white-blue streak of exorcising power followed by Strange's incoherent shout, cutting deep into the rank, slimy flesh.

. . .

Not truly invisible, Strange's initial flaying strike against Shuma-Gorath had the unintended side effect of peeling away Loki's summoned cloak of shadows as well. Strange in his frenzy was letting few illusions stand against his own power. He sneered at the minor inconvenience and rebuilt the cloak as he continued to run through the cemetery towards the ruined corpse and, according to his now-primed senses, where the Key still was. Fitz and the lady lived, and they were taking advantage of Strange's attack to get out of the immediate line of fire. Good enough. His tension eased slightly, still cursing himself out for taking what time he did to prepare for the Key. Regardless of the necessity, it _hurt_ knowing that he'd damned near watched the pair get destroyed.

But they lived. Now to see them kept them that way, and get to the damned artifact before it disappeared underneath unknowable tons of shifting flesh. With Belasco's spirit entirely gone and himself closer, he could barely sense the Key. It must have been tossed aside by the God's furious attack at the altar. He dodged past a tumbled boulder and cut out through the tree-line, now exposed to the field of combat.

The sound of air being cut through by something fast and massive held him just long enough to ensure he didn't need to make a jump of his own – instead, he heard the insulted _scree_ of something slashing against steel. He looked up and saw Stark nearby and spinning down with Strange too far behind, the man in the armor having been knocked aside by Shuma-Gorath's assault. From where he was, Loki could see the suit's lights temporarily flickering. He snarled under his breath and lifted a hand. He couldn't help Fitz, but he may as well help the annoying Avenger.

. . .

Coulson had his hand up to block the full sight of the whirling mass of flesh and its black, impossible eye, but he could still keep an eye on the field. At the moment he felt useless, helpless to do anything but watch and listen to Friday's calm robotic voice communicating out from the Iron Man suit. Strange had a better view and the ability to _do_ something about what was going on. This time, Coulson himself couldn't even help dive for the artifact. All he could do was shout directions to Fitz to get all three of them out of the line of fire while everyone else tried to fight.

He watched as Tony Stark got slammed in midair by a tentacle that had been designed for a strike against Strange. The titanium alloy suit started to crash towards the ground at what for anyone else would be fatal speeds. As it was, if he collided, they were going to lose half of their air support against the emerging God – unless Loki suddenly grew wings out of his ass. Half-frozen, watching Stark fall like fabled Icarus, a dim part of his mind decided that outcome probably wouldn't surprise him that much.

What _did_ happen was somehow more abrupt. As Friday ticked off a calm countdown to ground collision through his phone's connection, he watched a chaotic construction of pure ice stalagmites suddenly sprout up to entangle the falling Avenger. The new structure was fragile and glassy, but Friday's countdown changed to a calm declaration of manageable speeds, with her backup routine cycling up within seconds. With a flash that caused Coulson to wince, he saw another whizzing tentacle blocked by a shield that was thrown into midair by the hovering sorcerer supreme. Stark was going to stay in the fight. Coulson grinned when Stark's startled voice came over the comm line.

 _"_ _Friday? Strange wasn't slinging ice around a minute ago. Please do not tell me I owe the_ other _guy a solid."_

 _"_ _My algorithms are still collating trace data, but the energy surge suggests you do, in fact, owe target: Loki a 'solid'."_

"He sometimes takes payment in decent to good whiskeys,"Coulson couldn't resist chiming in. "I'll let him know when I get a chance."

 _"_ _Poor Phil, we all mourned him, too bad he's still dead to me._ " Honest to God, Phil thought he could hear the man rolling his eyes. He started to laugh; half out of relief, half out of almost missing Stark's jackassery. _"Friday, cut off laughing man before he puts me in hock for my entire liquor cabinet, figure out how far out we gotta be to not get smacked by that thing again._ "

 _"_ _Target: Shuma-Gorath is no longer within my calculation matrix. I would suggest Denmark."_

Friday didn't sound like she was joking. The line cut out again as Coulson switched tasks to finding Fitz and the young woman who still sounded like the lady he met long ago in Knowhere.

 _. . ._

Fitz nearly went ass over teakettle when Coulson got into their path at the edge of the cemetery. Death still had his arm and that was all that kept him upright. "Sir!"

"Got a route mapped out." Coulson pointed behind him, up a narrow track that went up and over another series of ridges into the trees. "Stark's pretending to not talk to me right now, but Friday just messaged over to say Strange is about to light it up like Bonnaroo. We don't want to be around for the collateral damage. Treeline gets us out of immediate range."

"If Shuma-Gorath continues to grow unchecked, _immediate_ range is not what we must be concerned with. There will be nowhere to run, not in all of this creation." Death looked back, noting the flutter of the red cloak as it rose high into the sky to regard the beast. "Has he set a ward to assist us? Did Loki?"

"I-probably not? They seem kinda busy out there." Coulson shared a look with Fitz as he turned to lead them up the path. "Can you, ma'am?"

"Not to the extend we would need." She frowned at Coulson's blink. "I'm the incarnation of a specific universal element, Coulson, not an omnipotent sorcerer."

Coulson nodded slowly, accepting that. "I don't know why, but I feel like I heard a 'dammit, Jim' in there somewhere. Okay. Head for the treeline, watch for remaining cultists, root for the team." He paused, realizing Death wasn't moving with the small group yet. She was staring at something beyond him, her expression drawn tight into bemusement. "Trouble already?"

"I smell something." She sighed heavily, this revelation having some meaning only to her. "There was a time where dead things stayed dead and travelers remained in their own lands. This clearly is not that era any longer."

Coulson blinked at her, not sure what that meant. "I'm sorry I got dragged back into life?"

She gently waved him off as if that _obviously_ wasn't the trouble, striding past him up the path towards what safety they could find.

. . .

Doctor Stephen Strange no longer saw the battlefield as a physical, mundane thing. For him, there were multiple levels of reality to shift through as he examined the growing, staggering mass of the God-beast that glowed in countless shades of nauseation and filth throughout all of them. With each minute It was free to bring raw chaos into an ordered reality, Its power multiplied. A sickness, rampant in the system of life itself.

Braced between the fields where his allies still ran and fought, and the sacred realms of magic that were his charge, Strange pulled his mystic cloak tight around himself and with a series of shouted words implored the powers of the Vishanti incarnate to his side.

The night sky lit up all around him – to his left, the growing green orb of light that indicated the presence of Hoggoth. The orb emitted a metaphysical presence like a big cat lying in the hot sun, sweet herbs left out to dry, and something like a soft purring wheeze. To his right, Agamotto's representative orb gleaming red and wild, filled with incongruous woodsmoke and the clean smells of something only found in memories. Above was _She,_ Oshtur, the Light that stood firm against the darkness of Chthon itself, and she was only _there_ , present, otherwise unknowable. The closest thing to omnipotent that could be permitted by the rules of magic. The soft rush of the ocean filled the sky, her simple cloak and herald.

So flanked by these Powers that were his guardians and his guides, Strange roared one more time in defiance of the corruptive God that was already swinging half a dozen tentacles into place around him. The sky filled with Its one monstrous, impossible, implacable eye and the Sorcerer Supreme looked into it to see the _other_ Shuma-Gorath. The one that filled universes with Itself and left only the cancer to feed in Its wake, indescribable and unceasing. It pressed against the firmament of reality, and Strange snarled at It without fear. From his lips poured an invocation not only to the Vishanti at his side, but to every power that might possibly stand against the rising dark.

The tentacles spun in to squeeze the essence out of the Vishanti's chosen warrior and from within that damned cocoon that held Strange there suddenly was _light_.

Only light, and the rent, burning flesh of the newborn God. With all this power at his command, Strange's presence seemed to expand to fill the battlefield as he burst out of the trap of tentacles. The insensate roar of Shuma-Gorath shuddered through the earth and rippled along its purpling flesh, but Strange continued to float, untouched by its corruption. His face was alight with pure power and as his hands moved the elements themselves came to his command. First the wind to buffet the monstrosity back, then the flames to stun Its eye. Agamotto's cry filled his mind to block out his opponent. It bought him time to force a few more inches of ground. Shuma-Gorath slid back towards the trees It rent through – but only a little.

Elsewhere, in the places in the grey where magic itself was the roots and sky, he burned through the God's corruption to leave only the ghost of ash behind. And yet, at each terrible salvo Strange summoned, the thing came back again and again. It _grew._

The sky flashed bright with the raw power between Sorcerer Supreme and invading deity, but behind his bared teeth was the doubt – was this, all his strength, going to be enough? He thought not. Shuma-Gorath was quickly gaining a foothold despite everything he could throw at It. If they could not shove It back through into the darkness between reality somehow, It was going to win eventually. The thing was inevitability itself, a mockery of Death's own persistence.

Rustling through the fringes of the mystic grey, he scented a thief's whisper – a quick shadow of someone else cheating his way through reality to get close to the battlefield's center. Strange tensed at the intruder, then realized who it _had_ to be.

He came to another plan – buy time for Loki to figure out what in blazes he thought he was doing so close to the flowing core of the great beast. With a fresh snarl and another invocation to the Vishanti, incarnate at his side, he flung himself wholly into Shuma-Gorath to ensure It would not look too closely at anything other than his direct attacker.

Whirring close, Stark entered the fray again alongside. Strange listened for when the man was about to fire a charged shot from the weapons in his hands and arms, and then followed it with a volley of light and fire of his own. Together, they forced another few inches of regained ground.

The inaudible, ceaseless roar that slid like acid against the surface of all of creation told them what It thought of all this.


	24. Crack Shot

24\. Crack Shot

. . .

Loki's heel made a dry snap against a long fragment of bone, one of the last recognizable scraps of the dead Belasco. He didn't bother to glance down as he dug his heel in to finish the job on the shattered femur. A shame he never got the chance for direct vengeance, but there were greater issues at hand. Larger, so to speak.

If he looked up, he would see rising high above the cracking trees the lower lid of that inhuman, staring eyeball. He did not. There was nothing there for him in that gaze except unwelcome madness. Let Strange and Stark battle the thing directly while he kept scrabbling around the muck for another chance to change the situation.

It knew he was there. Even busy with the hovering pair of gnats, the pulsating God knew something else threatened within Its range. He had to keep mobile, dodging smaller tentacles snaking out from within the central mass of the thing. They seemed to snuffle around after him, each thin limb having some of its own agency. The tips of these ended in narrow flipper-like structures, a single flexible sucker-like appendage coated in some slick secretion. He had a fairly clear suspicion about what would happen if one of these things affixed itself to his skin and decided that possibility wasn't going to reach the testing phase if he had anything to say about it. When one of them flickered close, he was suddenly no longer _there._ A mix of his own illusions, some easy teleportation, and the fervent hope that he wouldn't end up landing himself in the range of yet another coiling threat. So far, his luck was bearing out.

' _If you could kindly hurry what you're doing, Loki? There is no great deal of personal entertainment for me up here.'_ The intruding thought wasn't his own and he snapped his head up to glare at the otherwise occupied Sorcerer Supreme. Telepathy wasn't his strongest art, and since the scepter's carved place in his life he decided he held certain personal and ethical opinions about the mental magics. This breach of protocol meant little to Strange at the moment. Understandable, and yet...

Loki decided against sending back a response, although there was a temptation to arrange something much like a psychic ice cream headache in the sorcerer's skull. He decided it was petty, and while that in general he could be in favor of, he was also busy. He ignored the continued presence of Strange at the edges of his thoughts and resumed his search instead, the gouges in the muck occasionally illuminated by either magefire or another of Stark's exploding missiles.

Strange didn't bother to tell him, he knew: Time was drawing short, and the Door had to be closed. He felt certain he knew how. All he needed was the damned _Key._

. . .

"Stark!" Strange shouted the name into the rising wind formed by Shuma-Gorath's current lunge. "Everything you've got! Right into the eye!"

 _"_ _Hey, listen, you weird Vincent Price knockoff. 'Everything I've got' is going to roast my remaining power and my ass will have to take the bus home. That's assuming we all survive past the next five minutes."_

Strange's eyes were full-black, seeing countless streams of reality warp at the God's presence. In one of them, he saw the chance that still remained. A flicker of potential all but buried in the earth below them. But he needed to get the thing to roll back. Just a few more meters. "If you'd care to spend more than those five minutes complaining about your poor wasteful life, you will act as I request. Quit delaying and _do it_."

The flare outputs on the suit's palms glowed blindingly brilliant, followed by the high-pitched whine of every weapon system Stark had currently installed going hot. _"_ _God, fine, whatever. On three, Motivational Shia. Friday's got me locked on target."_

Strange didn't bother to look down at the rest of the scene on the physical plane. He could sense it all, and he put his last remaining shreds of hope towards the best outcome. "Three. Two..."

. . .

Loki realized what was happening above him just in time to duck. Stark's suit peeled open to drop every remaining missile, every charged shot of raw energy into the central mass of Shuma-Gorath. That was enough to stagger and ripple the growing flesh, but the coup de grace that followed was the real prize. Strange's invocation in a dozen dead sorcerer's languages brought the sky-tearing ripples of fire and lightning, light and dark, all to bear right behind the 'mundane' firepower the Iron Man suit unleashed. Enough power to obliterate almost any living thing he'd ever known in a thousand years of life – and still, not enough to end the ceaseless God.

But It tumbled backwards from the sheer force assayed against it, the great Eye rolling up to behold the sky and curse it. The tentacles that were still trying to seek him out withdrew in pain and offense and as the fetid flesh slid back towards the loch to regroup, Loki saw a huge chunk of smashed altar re-emerge from deep within the ruined earth, far away from where the thing had once laid. His senses lit up, telling him what his own sharp eyes already picked out.

Underneath the heavy marble was a tiny dull gleam of pewter and red. Twenty meters of a hard run. He started to lunge and then had to drop and roll with an oath under his breath when Shuma-Gorath spun out another of Its thinner, more agile limbs to try and snap at him. He scrambled up, realizing another one was uncoiling to press towards the same goal as he.

He cut at it with summoned ice as he dodged the initial attacker again, the edges of countless frozen blades razor-sharp at his command kept aloft. With a sweep he managed to slice the dangerous tip off the one behind him as it whirled too close for comfort. What he could see of the wall of flesh rippled at the small but painful attack. A silent, inarticulate wail of offense battered against his psychic defenses, nearly boiling through. Above, Strange unleashed a smaller follow-up salvo. He took a quick glance, realizing Stark was no longer hovering alongside the sorcerer supreme. He bared his teeth at what that meant and sped up again.

The second tentacle still in play wrapped around his ankle and then pulled taut, an act that _should_ have severed his foot from his leg – if he hadn't dropped a couple of illusions to mask his real path. Ducking underneath as he reappeared, he dropped to his chest in one more ungraceful push and got a single fingertip on the pommel of the Promethium Key. The touch of it was enough to make his arm tingle, but he'd prepared well. It could do little else.

 _I need another couple inches or so_. The thought was instinctual, barely acknowledged. He started to wiggle forward, time bought for him by another crack of mystic lightning that glanced off Shuma-Gorath's eyeball. The great mass flexed and roiled and the tentacle that still had him targeted snapped down in a pained reflex action. The edge of it glanced against his calf, the slick gleam of its flesh incinerating the fabric of his trouser leg in a long and jagged line down to his ankle. Unavoidable agony sliced him along the bone and he used it to jerk himself forward, snaring the weird hilt of the Key with his fingers.

The tentacle snapped again but caught open air as he rolled away with his prize in hand. He hissed as the cold muck of the moor licked against the wound quickly going septic along his leg, catalyzing it like wildfire. That pain too, he used, getting upright to stagger away from its range. He almost fell twice, the injury feeling like it spread through his entire leg and slowly crawling upward.

 _Poisoned. Best burn that out quickly._

When he staggered again, he wrapped his hand around his injured limb and coursed an arcing line of controlled heat through the thin cut so quick and hot that all he could smell was himself. The narrow scar was something to worry about later. He buried what he could of the pain and harnessed the rest as he kept limping, not away, but close to where Strange yet hovered. "Get It staring at you again!" he shouted up to the sorcerer.

"Tell me you've got an idea to go with that unpleasant notion, Loki," came the half-distracted response. Power coursed along his hands.

He grinned through the dull, throbbing pain in his leg, the effect feral. In his hand, the Key dangled lightly. "I've always been good with knives."

Instead of a reply, the sky lit up one more time with arcing blue light and the distant roar of Hoggoth's fury.

. . .

The Promethium Key, tool and weapon both. Loki balanced it in his hand and then gave it a bounce to understand its heft, knowing exactly what it could do when focused. An artifact for exorcists and summoners, forged by long-dead mages who surely could not have known what their last brother would do with it. If they did, damn them, too. He could feel its capability tingle through his fingers, recognizing it as both prison and door. Above him, Strange summoned the God's attention with one more wild shout, even his immense power flagging as the battle continued.

With a creak, the horrifying rippling mass of Shuma-Gorath writhed up to regard both the still-hovering Sorcerer and the waiting small God where he stood below. Loki glanced up to mark the Eye's position and for a second found himself held frozen by Its focused gaze.

The damned iris, made of countless shades of bleakness and horror, cutting through every spectrum of reality. If a color could somehow scream, that shade could be found in that staring eye and its mutilated pupil. It marked him with Its full regard, and reflected in the wide eye he saw himself, all his secrets laid bare on a slab of Its hate.

The resultant effect was not what Shuma-Gorath wanted. He'd already seen the old secrets, and knew now full well who and what he was. His identity was _his_ to command and no other. Here, the eldritch thing trespassed against his domain. He narrowed his eyes and snapped his arm out to ready a deceptively casual toss. A second later, the Key arced through the air like a lance until the tip of it pressed dead center against the cornea. For a single monstrous second, Loki could see the Eye shudder and collapse within itself, and then the Key continued to cut through the wall of flesh with a rising scream through the air.

As it passed through with an abruptness that bordered on anti-climactic, the vile God shimmered through countless layers of reality to be locked back into the darkness between. In its wake was silence, and then at last the return of confused waterfowl hooting in the night. The Key itself clattered against a tree just out of sight.

Better to be forgotten there, and let the earth claim it down to be lost. Strange's last dregs of power thundered down to sunder a place through the earth, where it fell to be forgotten. Hopefully for all time.

. . .

With the God banished, Loki staggered again. With the threat ending and the cult scattered, he could take the time to realize just how damned much his leg yet hurt. Behind him, he heard someone heavily trudging up. He looked over his shoulder to see Stark with his faceplate peeled back to reveal a sweaty face. The man was giving him a half-hearted wave, the suit barely operational. His goatee'd chin jutted at him. "So, today sucked."

Not much else he could say to that. "Yeah."

"You gonna lose that leg?"

He grimaced, unsure of the answer. The injury had come to him so quickly, it was hard to know what the effects would ultimately be. If it would last. If he'd gotten all the poison out. Instead of showing the rest of his concerns, he snorted. "I'm going to be extraordinarily upset if I do. I suppose our next trick is to ask Strange. I hope he takes SHIELD's healthcare."

"Doctor Hot-Shit up there, am I right? His bedside manner blows, dude." The underpowered Iron Man suit thudded up alongside, a red-alloy arm reaching out to give him something to grab and lean onto. "Let's go find the Skywalker family up the ridge and have the doc check your leg out when we get there." Stark looked up as the sorcerer floated down to join them. "You been hearing me?"

"I think I'm having a moderate heart attack." Strange sounded exhausted. The red cloak fluttered limply around him. "Needle me all you want. I'll react more fully next week with a sharply written letter from my recovery bed."

Stark grinned at him. "Cool. I hate your haircut. And your goatee. You look like you're ripping off my style."

Strange snorted. "I had it first, you rejected Radio Shack employee."

"I hate you both," said Loki without rancor, wincing with a hiss through his teeth as he tried to take a step without help. He gave up and used the still-offered metal arm to steady himself. "A bit less than usual at the moment, but let's face it. You're both terrible people. Selfish, arrogant, overly sure of yourselves. Poncy facial hair. This from me, the king of terrible people."

"Get bent, wannabe dictator guy. Your fancy horny hat was, hands down, the _ugliest_ piece of haute couture I ever laid eyes on. Did your dad hate you or what, giving you that thing?" Stark set the pace as Loki gave up a wounded laugh. Together, amiably insulting each other with every step, they trudged up towards where the rest of the team had found safety.


	25. Epilogue: The God of Change

Epilogue: The God of Change

. . .

Death grudgingly took a kernel out of the bag of popcorn and passed the bag back to the God of Stories as the bemused Loki still leaning on Stark regarded the odd crew seated on the log with a lifted eyebrow. "I thought fairly surely that you were some symbolic figment of my trapped imagination." He let go of the metal arm and dropped onto the damp ground, using both his hands to stretch out his wounded leg to examine. The cauterized line was already seeping a little. He poked at it with a finger, wincing when the cut burned anew.

"I _told_ you, we weren't done talking." The other Loki picked a husk out from between his front teeth with a single black fingernail, using his other hand to balance the microwavable bag on his lap. "Also, did you think I was going to miss a chance to watch all of you literally punch out Cthulhu?"

Fitz talked through a mouth of corn. "Shuma-Gorath."

The other Loki gestured at him with the lip of the popcorn bag, ignoring the long, hairy stare he was getting from the Sorcerer Supreme bringing up the rear of the group. "It's a phrase. Anyway. Not much difference from my point of view."

Coulson grimaced down at the Loki he knew, looking at the way the brow furrowed together in barely disguised pain. "You okay?"

"I've been better." He winced again as he tentatively flexed the cauterized wound. "Sad lack of snacks on our end. Not that it would have helped."

"Yeah, well." He jutted his thumb at the guy commandeering the popcorn bag. "This a relative of yours? He helped us out, but he also keeps screwing around and saying he's named Loki. If that's a fairly common name in Asgard, I didn't want to tell him you've kinda ruined it for people."

"I hope you'll accept 'not exactly and yet sort of vaguely' because it's the best I've got on short notice." Loki looked up as Strange hunkered next to him, ignoring the bemused expression on Coulson's face. Next to the Director, the God of Stories was smirking. Light appeared within the black-gloved palms of the doctor, pouring the gleam along his leg. "Verdict?"

"You're going to limp for a while and high odds you keep the scar. I think you in fact burned out all the poison, but I'll suggest monitoring it for some time. Some chance of future effects, but I sense nothing at present. I'll want to do a followup check in about two weeks, sooner if it troubles you." He narrowed his eyes at Loki's sigh. "Forget your physiology, you took a glancing hit from a God. No small beast of one, either. If it's _just_ the scar, you're getting off lightly."

"Scars are seldom 'just' scars." The God of Stories coughed around a kernel of popcorn. "Each carries the weight of memory. They change us, too."

"True enough, but yes. You'll live." Death lifted an eyebrow for emphasis.

The God of Stories elbowed her with gentle irreverence as he grinned at the other Loki. "That's about as official as you can get."

Death looked at the interloper deity to give him a remarkably human glare, her English lilt clipping angrily. "You don't even _go_ here."

He crunched the now-empty bag in one hand, mock-affronted. "I put up a ward to help you! I couldn't do more, lest I get snapped at for interfering overmuch. I _do_ behave occasionally."

She ignored him and stared down at Loki, still sitting with his wounded leg. He shrugged back. "This is not my fault. For absolutely once in my life, this is raw, unfiltered, _not my fault_."

"Just wherever you seem to go, these things occur in your wake. Like natural disasters."

"And now I get back-talked by Mistress Death personally and publicly. My legend is complete." Loki flung his hands in the air, drawing a thin smile from the incarnation. On the other side of the girl, Fitz was laughing so hard there was just a wheeze coming out. "So now what? The awkward flight back home? Tired silences loaded with all the horrible things we just saw? How much paperwork is there in nearly destroying an old Scottish manor anyway? I wager a lot."

Death lifted a hand. "I'm hungry." She looked at Coulson as he leaned forward to stare at her. "What? I've been on dull hospital food for ages."

He sat back again. "I don't understand."

"Very well. Hospital food and the infinite energy of existence. Functionally one and the same for me. Is that any clearer?"

"No."

Loki locked eyes with Fitz, who'd clearly given up on anything making sense and was just grinning at the sheer absurdity of it all. "Fitz. Save us. Your hour comes. What's in Glasgow in terms of sustenance?"

He beamed. "Everything. Even this late at night."

Loki leaned back against his arms, his voice not at all serious. The more he talked, the more Tony started to snicker. "Stark's here. I'm bitter. I never got shawarma the last time I was in a disaster area with this obnoxious creature. They practically tied me to a bike rack in New York while they all ate garlicky things. Thor smelled for hours. Worst day of my life."

Coulson cut in over the giggles. "Don't exaggerate. They put you in the back of a truck with about twenty of the biggest armed dudes they could get on short notice."

"And everyone else went to lunch. _My_ next meal was prison food." He looked mournful. The expression also didn't look very sincere and he gave up with a sigh. "Oh, fine. Ignore me. We sealed away a God, smashed a cult, everyone's banged up. My leg hurts, if I may understate. I think we can at least agree that rates a meal."

A casual vote came up universally in favor of food.

. . .

Strange was nearly asleep atop a pile of chopped vegetables, his fork buried in a slopping short bowl of hummus. From time to time, Tony Stark looked over at him, smirking. His Iron Man suit was propped up in a corner of the tiny Mediterranean late-night diner like a waxwork mannequin, getting iPhone snapshots taken of it by tourists and residents alike while the operator chugged his way through his third wrapped pita.

The God of Stories gestured at Loki with his own wrap as Coulson finished wrestling with his own food next to him. The Director was busy communicating with the Playground via phone at the same time, barely paying attention to the murmured conversations going on around the table. "Looks like this worked out for you alright."

Loki glanced down at the clean gauze wrap visible under the ragged remains of his trouser leg. "Well, since I'm not dead..."

"Mm. Everything for a price. Your story's not over yet." He caught Death giving him a side-eye. "I'm going soon. Promise."

She dipped a torn piece of bread into a bowl of spicy paste, still regarding him with an untrusting expression. "Please do. There _are_ a few rules that border our existence, though not quite so many as mortals believe. And I mislike it when deities range so far from home."

"Says Death taking a holiday here." He grinned at her arch look. " _I_ know what you're up to."

Fitz looked from oddity to oddity, then over to the familiar oddity whose expression indicated that shawarma was in fact just fine. "W-what's she up to?" The Loki he knew shrugged, flickering his gaze up to examine Death as he did so.

"He knows." Death put the rest of her food down on a small plate, reaching into her pocket. A moment later, a folded piece of parchment was passing across the top of the table to him. He took it from her with his brow furrowing. "We have a little time. Not much. But it _can_ be stopped. I don't think it's too late yet."

Loki unfolded the paper, his brow now rising in open surprise at his own old sketch of six colorful stones, aligned in a pattern he'd guessed at after countless hours of study. Fitz frowned, lost again.

"I took that from the wall of your hidden lair, when I led Coulson to its door on your request. Perhaps I should apologize for the infringement, although I doubt you're surprised." She smiled at him. "As for how it gets here to this hand I now wear? Well... I prepare in advance as best I may."

"You've got a thievery problem, Mistress Death. It's becoming an honest personality trait." He refolded the paper and regarded her, thinking of Thanos. "He'll come for you. Even here. Especially here. It's become a nexus for these things." He tapped the paper against his fingertips.

"Not yet. Not _soon._ " She clasped her hands together on the table. "I made this bargain carefully. But ultimately you know you're at the same risk."

"I am." He sighed, resigned. A glance passed between him and the different version of 'Loki' currently wolfing down the rest of his wrap. "That much is not up to change." He considered, then looked at Death again, noting that the pallor and the bone-like structure of her prior face simply wasn't there. It _was_ Her, all the distance and bitter old knowledge, but still also, something else. Then he thought about _rules_ again, and change. He blinked, comprehension dawning. "You're not dying. Not this time, in this form. You're not going to leave this one as some message to be found. You're _staying._ "

"My leukemia was in remission." For a second, only a young girl smiled. "But I got tired of being afraid all of the time, pretending to be strong. The bargain was perfect for me." The tiniest change in her cadence meant the girl was again girl and immortal Death both. She leaned back. "You never were, you know. Afraid of the dark all around you, but not me."

He passed the folded piece of paper through his fingers, considering her. She rose from her seat and beckoned him to follow to the far corner of the diner to talk. Coulson glanced up as they passed, looking down again when Loki nodded to tell him it was all right.

Her smile broadened for a moment as she looked up at him, her hands folded primly together. "We met for the first time when you were very small. I doubt you could remember, not while awake. You were in the dark, cold and alone, and I watched close over you to see what would happen. Just this little squalling creature, frightened of everything around him. But not of me. You looked at me and smiled. Not rare, but not common either. You saw me, with your tiny red eyes already past the blindness of birth. In the end, it was not _my_ hands that took you from the ice. You must remember that. There is meaning there."

Loki was silent.

"Where are you in the sorcerer's grey? What are you becoming?" She studied his silence, finding something written there. "Change, then, after all? That's what I'm looking for. The ending of Belasco part of the purpose. But the war? That's got to stop before it starts. The balance is already gone awry and when Death is out of balance I've no choice but to fight for Life. We're all bound by that. Order and Chaos are ends of a spectrum, but my domain is forever both at the same time. I live in paradox. I'm always there, and I cannot permit what's been done by Thanos in my name. The rest – well, it begins here. I wasn't running. I was looking for a place to start fighting from. A place to stand."

He inclined his head politely. "Well, then. I suppose I'm to let you know when I have a plan."

She smiled, crinkling the corners of her eyes. "Do that." She turned to regard Strange, the man's head starting to tilt further into his barely touched plate of food. "Poor man. So frightened of me. It's going to get worse." She glanced up at Loki one more time, then tipped a wink so quick it almost didn't exist. " _He_ gets to loan me a place to stay."

That drew a laugh out of him as Death glided towards the table, putting her hand gently on Fitz's shoulder. To his credit, the boy didn't jump or start. He looked up as she bent and whispered something in his ear.

Not intending to eavesdrop, Loki still saw her words on her lips and saw the immediate relief that flooded Fitz's face. No question who Death referred to. For Fitz's peace, some reward for his help in a similar word of hope – _She isn't dead._

It was hard to tell who was more surprised when Fitz hugged that incarnation of immortal Death.

. . .

The God of Stories finished gnawing on a pita chip as Fitz slammed the back doors closed on another rented vehicle; this one a full sized truck with a trailer attached to the back for the temporarily defunct Iron Man suit. "You're going to have to talk to Thor."

That got him a pointed look from the taller, older Loki.

He licked some seasoning off his fingertip, arching an eyebrow at the expression. "Keep shut and let me talk at you a minute. Look, deep down you know that Ragnarok isn't actually an ending. It's just another piece of a cycle, and you well know, sometimes breaking a cycle isn't enough to end it. That's the nature of reality. The nature of _us_ – mischief and lies and chaos. Ironically, acting as an agent of change isn't enough to let ourselves transform. We'll have to always fight for it, stinking like ink and blood and fire. I _still_ don't know if any of us are going to win out against that, but I can hope."

"Sometimes hope is the only thing we get to keep." Loki thought of Frigga, the memory he stole back when running from another possible version of himself. Another darkened future, banished by the hope Frigga never lost. The faith she had in both her children.

"I asked you to not interrupt, but that was kind of on point." The God of Stories was looking elsewhere. "You need to know something about the gems. A secret I stole in one of the other incarnations. What she wants, stopping the war. It _can_ be done. Not easily, I expect."

Loki tapped at his pocket, the sound of paper crinkling softly. "The gems are infinity themselves. Each one powerful enough to overtake the unprepared. All of them together, in the hands of someone like Thanos... it will be the end of everything."

"Yes, but they're also tied to one universe alone. They are a reflection, a distillation of that universe. That's their sole weakness, Loki. Which makes it _Thanos's_ weakness."

He studied the wolfish face, considering the paths _between_. The fragments of reality he'd passed through in his life, the roads this other deity had to casually walk down just to have this conversation. Like going through a door that couldn't ever be closed. Not for them. "...And our strength."

A single black-nailed finger raised to point, the God of Stories grinning. "Now you're getting it. But first... your brother. You do understand, right?"

Loki slumped against the side of a tall lamppost, tired. He picked at a fleck of peeling paint instead of meeting the eyes of the slightly shorter man. "Yes. I do. We're our own paradox. One doesn't really exist without the other."

"If you're going to survive what's coming, you need each other."

He glanced at Coulson, waiting for him on the other side of the truck's window. "I wonder if he'll believe that."

"You've got friends now. People tend to believe when others do. Thor's been hurt by you, no lie. You've poured out a lot of what you had. But he likes to believe, he's the steadfast one. It won't be that hard for him. It'll be harder for you. There's dark times coming."

"And you'd know."

"Yes. But you're right. There's the hope, too." The God of Stories gave him a small, sad smile. "Even that can hurt to cling to. All we can do is try." He shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged, ready to go.

Loki watched the young God's broad back start to disappear up the street. "Do you know how this story ends?"

"I do," came the answer, called back on a drifting breeze.

"Want to give a hint?"

"As they all do, Loki. With one last 'The End' written, with postscript to follow."

"Right." Loki rolled his eyes over to Coulson, who was now rolling down the window to chivvy him with a hurry up gesture. Leaning back from the passenger seat, Stark was making childish faces while Fitz slapped at him to behave. "We truly _are_ all bastards."

Raucous laughter rang up the dark Glasgow street. A second later, there was only one God wandering around in Scotland, and he had a long nonstop flight waiting ahead to take him and his friends back to the States for whatever downtime they could steal.

. . .

 _Philadelphia, a very short time later._

Doctor Stephen Strange smiled down at the hardy woman manning the clinic counter, her round face all business and unshakeable politeness. For his part, he kept his gloved hands neatly clasped together in front of him. "I'm terribly sorry to press. I _do_ have a lunch appointment with Dr. Drumm. Did he leave a note with you? Some... scribble on his agenda?"

The volunteer nurse glanced down at her clipboard while Strange pulled one of the pamphlets out of the clear plastic container set at the side of her window, comparing his card with what was written there. "You're absolutely correct, there you are. Very sorry about that, sir. His handwriting gets hurried sometimes."

"Quite all right." He put the pamphlet he was fussing with back down on the counter, inclining his head as she looked up and him and then down at his gloved hands with a professionally bland expression. "I'd hate to be a bother, particularly when he was so kind as to accept my request."

"You're the second princely fella I've had in here this month. Classing the place up on me." She gave him a wry grin as she checked the bay of timers set below the window sill for her eyes only. "By my reckoning, Dr. Drumm will be out shortly to get his messages. I'll happily let him know you're here. Would you like a seat, sir?"

"Thank you, but I'm thinking I'll wait outside. The weather is absolutely lovely today." He pressed his fingers together as he cut a slight bow. "Tell him I'll be by the alley on the other side of the clinic, if you would."

The nurse watched the tall doctor go as he let himself out the door, shrugging to herself. With a sigh, she picked up the disregarded donor pamphlet he'd left to put it back where it belonged. Her reflexes snatched the piece of paper as it fell out of the bottom and as she scanned what it said she sat down hard on the stool.

There were an awful lot of zeroes on the end of the check. They almost seemed to multiply through her blurring vision as her fingers began to shake. Startled, she could barely read the note scrawled underneath.

 _This donation to Project HOME made in the name of one 'Loki,' current address withheld._

 _PS: I don't care what Drumm believes, the man is an arrogant jackass._

. . .

"Okay, so that guy was Loki, but he wasn't you, but at the same time he _was_ a real God named Loki, and kinda so are you, and at what point is this _any_ of this supposed to make sense to me?" Coulson's legs dangled off the end of the rec room couch as he balanced an empty glass on his chest.

"Drink more. It'll all become clear at the bottom of the bottle."

Coulson gestured at him with the glass. "No, it won't. I'm thinking I'm going to switch to water because my head hurts enough as it is. So, okay, Death is Death, but right now she's also acting as a human, because being 'alive and healthy' means she's not showing up on Thanos's radar. Plus there's probably some sort of really skeevy thing going on with her being too young for him like this so he might step off if he does find her. _Please_ tell me I'm wrong on that last one. The way you described his obsession with her was really creepy."

"No, I expect you've got it. The Mad Titan has the romantic capability of a dead dog." Loki's still bandaged leg was up on a stool while he scratched quickly through a sheaf of paperwork. It ached intermittently under a red welt whose edges still occasionally revealed a wounded blue. To his intense annoyance, Skye was already breaking out jokes about Frodo and his annual sickness from Shelob's poison.

"You said he had kids."

"A few, yes. He steals them, mostly. He's like evil mirror universe you." Bottles clanked atop the narrow counter of the kitchenette as Loki topped off a small drink for himself. "Adopts people and warps them into universe-destroying militants through whatever means best apply. Fill in the blanks there, Coulson."

Coulson shivered, getting a glimpse through the tone of voice at all the things Loki would never say about the time after he fell from Asgard's shattered bridge. "So what's next, you think? She said we had some time left before things get heavy in the galaxy."

Loki didn't answer him, not aloud. The quiet, almost mournful look on his face said plenty in his stead, however, and he nursed at his drink.

Asgard. Sooner or later, everything came back to the beginning. It was just going to be a matter of what started it.

Coulson watched his strange, once unwilling friend burrow inside his thoughts for a little while. He let him do it in silence, knowing that this time, when Loki came out of it, he'd know he wasn't going to have to face what was coming alone.

It was some change, and for the better.

 _~Fin_

" _Either make this thing permanent inside of you or forever just climb draggled up into the conning tower every time for one short glimpse of the horizon." ~ Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test_

 _. . ._

 _6/23/15 MDS._ _All relevant rights remain in the hands of Marvel with no infringement intended. All realities are fair game. All half-mad demigods do whatever the hell they want._

. . .

Notes:

Project HOME is a real non-profit organization based in Philadelphia that focuses on the health, recovery, and safety of the homeless, and getting them off the streets in a progressive way. I am not associated with nor do I represent them.

Doctor Strange comics are a pain in the butt to summarize or rec. Outside of 'The Oath,' which is an enjoyable and approachable modern-day story, it's surprisingly difficult to nail him down in his own stuff outside of the Essentials-type collections. Strange tends to get power creep when you let him run off the leash; he's a Superman power class magic user in the Marvel Universe. To balance him out, he usually ends up playing second fiddle as a mystic advisor. This is why he showed up a lot in Amazing Spider-Man for a while, and part of why he ends up on various superhero councils. He has a central role in Marvel's current big event, as the Sheriff of Battleworld. My personal favorite appearance is as the John Dee counterpart in Neil Gaiman's alt-history superhero yarn 1602.

He tends to be an arrogant, sardonic, occasionally bitterly hilarious older man. I hope that came through here, and I honestly hope that carries into the film. :P

Jericho Drumm (Once known as 'Brother Voodoo' with all the bumps and terribly icky connotations that get you onto Cracked lists, he is currently known as 'Doctor Voodoo') is one of those characters that I'd be happy to see more from. His background history here is functionally his canonical story – as a psychologist, he ended up embroiled in the world of Haitian Voudou through his brother's fall and becomes a formidable sorcerer in his own right. He, too, has held the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme.

Shuma-Gorath has gotten the worst treatment over the last few years. Once one of Strange's most powerful and iconic foes, and a player in the large-scale Thanos Imperative/Realm of Kings comic event (whose spreading Cancerverse storyline, Lovecraftian elements, and dead Death were borrowed and then put through a woodchipper here), the elder thing is now arguably best known as... a DLC selectable character in multiple Marvel Vs Capcom fighting games.

Yes. You too can literally punch out Cthulhu on home console entertainment.

Belasco and his Otherplace Limbo, like Shuma, has been borrowed entirely from the comics and then altered slightly to fit the MCU style. Interestingly, instead of facing Strange, he usually overlaps with the X-Men. Notably Colossus and his little sister Illyana. He does have ties to Chthon and the other Elder Gods of Marvel lore, along with various attempts to bring horrible things through into new realities.

Death has been known to travel in human bodies, I promise I'm not just rolling down some slippery slope of overpowered Mary Sues. She's outright used the tactic to hide from opponents in really wonky stories in the past, and has been known to select avatars to represent her.

As for the God of Stories? He comes from the Loki: Agent of Asgard storyline, where his attempt to live a new life free from the consequences wrought by prior Lokis (it makes sense in context) gives him a unique understanding of story, tropes, and meta. Sort of but not quite like Deadpool. It's the continuation and possibly ending of a journey this Loki-identity started in Kieron Gillen's run on Journey into Mystery, and I felt he'd be sympathetic to what's going on over here. So I gave him a big cameo. This particular comic run started while I was working on the first Codex fic, and it's been strange a number of times to watch how the official comic would just blithely wander across themes I was right then chewing on.

The Codex will continue sometime over the summer, with a Coulson-centric short within the next couple of weeks. But for the next full length story, there's another question to be answered:

If this Loki won't be the one to close the cycle of Ragnarok around a struggling Asgard... who will?


End file.
